Franconi knew there was a plot; just didn’t know how far it went. Kept him up at night. Made noises in his sleep; not whimpering exactly, more like little yelps, like someone was jerking his nose hairs out one by one, with tweezers; and not telling him when they were going to do the next one. In and of itself, no biggie, but sum total? After five hundred yanks, Franconi became your garden variety Manchurian Candidate. Unrecognizable: Grey, corpse like, bags under his eyes like hammocks, mumbling about LBJ, JFK, Area 51, the whole nine.
Ate nothing but sardines. Bought ‘em by the case. Got a kidney stone. Ended up in the emergency room. Gave him IV fluids. Passed the stone. Made a tink in the stainless steel can. Said they were going to send it to the lab. That’s when he tried to tell them about the plot. Probably shouldn’t have. They didn’t listen. Called a psychologist. Psychologist showed up four hours later. Franconi had already left. Walked out the side door in his hospital socks.
Of course there was a plot; but one Franconi was never going to figure out. And yeah, it went far; there and back, one might say. Really didn’t matter. One way of looking at it was Franconi got his car stuck in the mud for no good reason. Better approach would have been to splurge on a desert or take up tango, whatever, path of least resistance. Didn’t do that: Impenetrable forest, bramble patch, endless maze; Call it what you like. Franconi ended up there. That’s the trouble with plots.
The Trouble with Plots
