The Ferret Gets ZZ out of the Kitchen, and into a Kind of Frying Pan
Zippy Zamazda, in Rico Soiree’s kitchen next the pantry, flour-covered and motionless, and even feeling a little queasy, looks like a dark mound of earth and cow dung bespattered in bird shit to the Ferret, before whom Zippy continues to abashedly stand.
And now, Zippy’s automatically reflecting upon the dashing alpha-male figure he cuts in his genuine wool felt fedora, chasing down corrupt, low-to-mid-level Ukrainian officials (in sycophantic imitation of the Ferret, who operates on a much higher and far more advanced level) amongst the byzantine gulag of Kyiv’s still-functioning, Soviet-era commissaries as part of the political commentary he does for the irregular online newsletter of a little-known boutique investment firm operating for some reason only in Ukraine’s capital, as well as Tbilisi, Georgia.
For he is forced to leave the fedora at home when he comes here, to work for Soiree, upon the latter’s orders, as Soiree, no doubt, sees the hat as a symbolic, and therefore unacceptable, even if merely subliminally suggested, challenge to his own authority over Zamazda.
And as the violent contrast clarifies in Zippy’s butter brain between himself in the sexually-charged (for his wife) fedora, and the servile, apron-wearing domestic lackey he must become, even when it means wearing a not-too-shabby tuxedo – “The Manservant Special” – from a nearby costume-rental shop (which he has to pay for out of his own meager earnings from Soiree), why…
… why… the entire humiliating arrangement – thanks, in no little part, to that otherwise frequently disappointed and overly expectant real-Ukrainian wife of his – is now causing his raging blood to rise to his burning cheeks, and then, uncontrollably, the upper lip begins to curl, quivering with indignation…
“Dude, heh! You’re like some immature kid. Snap out of it! Heh… heh… Now, listen to me: You’ve got to get out of here right away! As fast as possible you’ve got to make it to California – otherwise…”
“Wha’da’ya mean, right away?! I’ve got a potential million-dollar, or even more, deal with Goldstein… there’s a relationship I have to cultivate… get to know the guy… read the materials he sent me… see what it’s all about, and then –”
“Nooo, Zamazda… no, no, no, NO!!! There’s no time for all of that. You’re going to have to leave right away; in fact, no later than tomorrow – so you can be in California at the latest the next day, heh. So, I need you to write a note right now, how you killed Kate Mustard, and how you’re on the lam, and I’ll pin it to the dinner table out there using Soiree’s oversized and ostentatious stainless steel toothpick on the counter here, and, ah, and… it’ll be dark, ‘cause I’ll turn all the lights off, see, but then I’ll give you these advanced night-vision goggles that look merely like a cheap pair of swim goggles for glasses, which I just happen to have with me, and you put them on over your fat spectacles, see (I don’t need them, heh: for some reason, I can see really good in the dark; maybe it’s a recessive gene, or something, heh-heh-heh) – and then we leave together, and then you gotta be out-a here fast!”
“Killed Kate Mustard?! I’m not writing a note that says I killed Kate Mustard! Why would I do that? Ferret, none of this even makes any sense! Kate Mustard… I mean, that’s exactly what they’re talking about out there!”
“Duuuuude, heh! No one knows if that stupid, ugly, loudmouthed bitch is dead or not. They’re all just talking through their ass – even that fuckin’ Gonzales.”
“But, Ferret, it’s beginning to look like some serious evidence is being uncovered, and –”
“Dude-dude-dude, heh-heh, don’t be stupid. What are you going by? The frame narrative?”
“It’s by that detective guy, Dickerson. Everyone knows he’s a loon. You can’t trust anything he says. Heh. ‘Mustard was thought to have been murdered with a candlestick…’ That’s utterly preposterous. And then, look, and then he says, ‘… on Tuesday the 12th, in the early hours of the night.’ But Tuesday was the 13th, not the 12th.”
“I don’t know, Ferret. That seems like it could be just one of those common mistakes one runs across in newspapers often enough.”
“Look, dude, Mustard’s probably just out whoring, like she likes to do, except this time it’s taking her extra-long to do it. She’ll probably turn up soon enough. Yeah, she’s probably just playing a game. Her, and Soiree, both, heh. It’s a pretty well-kept secret by him (except not from me – heh-heh), that Mustard goes in for serious S&M. Soon after making his acquaintance on her short-lived talk show, “Meet the Bitch”, heh, she’s been obsessed with trying to find someone as good as Soiree at it. So far, she’s failed. Soiree knows it, and he’s real confident, heh, and it turns him on, and they both really like it, see, and it’s just a game with them, dude. And in that game, YOU’RE being played for a sap, Zamazda: heh-heh-heh… I mean, shit, dude!”
“Me? How am I –”
“Shut up! I’ll tell you how, heh; because, lookit, these people, they’re not like you and me; they are sick, dude – sick! Heh-heh. And you, dude, are fucking serving them! Don’t you think you owe it to yourself to throw off that stupid apron and finally walk around like the king you so rightfully deserve to be?”
“But, if I come back, and it turns out that Mustard really WAS murdered, then –”
“Then, by that time, dude, it will be clear it wasn’t you, because they’ll connect it all up to someone else. And if she turns up, like I said, NOT dead, then you’re obviously innocent, and the note you left will, in either case, be understood as a proud and justifiably cruel joke you’d played to underline the circumstances of your departure from Soiree’s service; especially given how everyone knows, and laughs at, the things he says to you… and, heh, about you; and that’s even worse!”
Convinced and dumbfounded, Zamazda writes the note, according to the Ferret’s dictation:
“Who killed Kate Mustard? I did. Hah, hah, hah. Don’t try to find me. I’m already on the lam. P.S. Dessert is in the icebox. Signed, Zippy Zamazda, former Chief Editor of the Kyiv Poster.”
Then, Zamazda puts on the night-vision goggles the Ferret gave him and they both pull down some shelves. The Ferret throws the switches in the circuit-breaker box, which is conveniently (as so often happens with the Ferret) located on the wall precisely where the kitchen and its pantry meet.
The Ferret pins the greasy note to the dinner table, and in the midst of all the noise and drunken confusion, the two run past the guests and out the door.
The Ferret pulls the goggles off Zamazda’s head and throws them to the elevator floor. In seconds, they are pressing the down button, and now they are out of the building. The Ferret ushers Zippy’s fat ass into the back seat of a waiting car, and then gets in behind him.
“Where to?” slowly asks a somewhat insinuating voice from under a large, floppy hat.
Zamazda, directly behind the driver, is able to make out little more than the black leather sleeve of the right arm gripping the steering wheel. The Ferret’s friend? Zippy has never met this man before.
Which is correct – for this is indeed his first encounter; one that will begin to change him… forever…
“Oh, ah, this guy’s flat – heh-heh-heh…”
“Podil?” rhetorically asks the driving man. “Ha!”
Zippy hears a note of suppressed glee and grim satisfaction in the man’s question and response; and then the man adds: “Ferret! That’s easier done than said!” And they take off.
“Heh-heh,” the Ferret remarks back, albeit, Zippy feels, a little uneasily… And, how does the man know who Zippy is… and where he lives?
‘The man appears to be joking,’ Zamazda thinks, ‘but he’s actually kind of pissed; like he resents doing this.’
Filed by The Rational Man, 4.18.25