Your Next-Door Neighbor Is a Dragon:. Zack Parsons

for the diminutive actor if it weren’t for his fraudulent blond pompadour and the bushy, golden caterpillars above his eyes.

      His face was flushed and sweaty. He was clad in boxer shorts and an ill-fitting hotel robe that hung open like playhouse curtains on either side of a rolling strip of torso. It was a very theatrical framing for the view of his grotesquely protruding bellybutton.

      A girl wearing a similar hotel robe brushed past him and then me and into the hallway. Her black hair hung in her face, but as she passed me I glimpsed eyes puffy and red from crying and streaked mascara. She smelled like stripper perfume and burning rubber. Lonnie hardly seemed to notice her departure.

      “Come in, come in,” Lonnie invited. “You want some star fruit, baby? A Thai massage?”

      “No, no thanks,” I replied. “This is an amazing room.”

      Lonnie’s suite was high ceilinged and luxurious. The main room was bathed in the golden light of parchment lampshades and appointed with overstuffed antique furniture that might have passed for Thomas Jefferson’s living room set from Monticello. Through the open double doors of the bedroom, I could see that the floor was scattered with cotton balls.

      “Yeah,” he looked around admiringly. “Not as good as the room I get at the Four Seasons in Manhattan, though. Has a fireman’s pole. You just can’t get that in Chitown.”

      Lonnie did a barefoot spin in the middle of the room, his arms spread as if to drink in his surroundings. Articles of clothing were draped haphazardly across the furniture. He scooped up a bra and a white T-shirt.

      “Have a seat,” he suggested.

      I moved aside a silvery sequined dress and relocated a purse from a chaise longue to an elegant teak end table sporting a Tiffany lamp. Round yellow pills spilled out of the purse across the polished wood. I looked to Lonnie and he shrugged.

      “Ain’t mine, baby,” he said. “I am drug-free. Alcohol and Ketamine only. Just kidding. Just kidding, baby. Loosen up. Maybe you should take a couple of those. Kidding, kidding, baby. But seriously, help yourself.”

      Lonnie was even more manic in person, bouncing from foot to foot like a lizard on hot sand. He seemed to remember he was still holding a bra, and he tossed it into the bedroom.

      “Housekeeping,” he said incredulously.

      I have never hated Lonnie, but I have never trusted him, and his guilty tweaker act was creeping me out.

      “Holy shit!” he proclaimed suddenly, bugging his eyes out. “What happened to the mitt there?”

      He leaned over to get a better look at my bag-covered hand. I realized that there was a small puddle of blood in the bag, as if it were a cut of meat from the butcher’s.

      “I didn’t know it was bleeding,” I said. I lifted it up and looked at the bag, but the rubber band around my arm seemed to be containing the blood.

      “What happened, baby?” he asked again.

      “That’s part of why I’m here, Lonnie. We need to talk about this book deal.”

      “All right.” He bobbed his head affirmatively. “All right, I’m down. That’s cool. Let’s order up some mimosas and—You like lobster tail?”

      “No,” I said.

      “That’s cool; that’s fine.” He snapped his fingers and paced distractedly.

      “Hey, look, I just want to—”

      “Here we go!” Lonnie snatched up the pearl-handled receiver of an antique telephone. He stabbed a fat finger into the rotary dialer and winched in the number for the front desk.

      “Yeah, this is Saunders in eight seventeen. Yeah. Having a powwow up here and I wanted to order some room service. Four mimosas and lobster tails. You want lobster tails?”

      “No, thanks,” I replied.

      “Better make it six mimosas and two lobster tails.”

      While he listened to the person on the other end he pantomimed shooting himself in the mouth.

      “All right,” he said. “The door is unlocked, so just come on in.”

      He hung up the phone and danced his way to the chaise longue and plopped down next to me. Not just next to me, practically on top of me.

      “So what’s the bug, baby? What’s the deal?” He slapped a fat-fingered hand on my knee. “What can Lonnie Saunders do to make you feel good?”

      His invasion of my personal space was calculated. He wasn’t making a creepy proposition, nor was he being overly friendly. Lonnie had some inkling of why I was there, and the sweaty little goblin wanted to bully me in some small way.

      Lonnie was not physically intimidating. I had almost two feet on him. His move worked anyway. It threw me off. I have always been horrible at negotiating or demanding anything, and his hand on my knee creeped me out just enough to ruin my whole pitch.

      Lonnie’s smile broadened and I realized I must have winced or somehow betrayed my discomfort. Having made his point successfully he gave my leg a squeeze and scooted away from me on the chaise.

      I knew I was defeated, but I gave it a try anyway.

      “I can’t write this book, Lonnie,” I began. “A funny guide book is pretty clichéd to begin with and about the Internet? This isn’t 1995. People know what the Internet is at this point.”

      “Come on, Zack, you’re on the Internet,” he said, as if that meant something. “You know all about that stuff. You’re an expert.”

      “You can’t write a book about catchphrases and funny websites,” I countered. “That’s what I know. A bunch of weirdos and their weirdo friends on their weirdo websites. Hell, I’m one of those weirdos.”

      “So don’t write about the websites; write about the weirdos.” Lonnie craned his neck as if searching for something. “Hey, do you have any cigarettes?”

      “Sorry, I just quit,” I said. “Lonnie, look, even if I wanted to write the book, I just…I can’t.”

      I waved my bloody bag around. Lonnie snorted with amusement.

      “So you cut your hand? Don’t be a baby, baby. Ernest Hemingway wrote The Old Man and the Sea with his ball sack cut open. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s house was lousy with raccoons. He almost died from rabies.”

      “I don’t think any of what you just said is actually true,” I countered, “but I’m not using this hand thing as an excuse. I’m right-handed and it’s going to be many weeks before I can use my right hand again. Maybe many months before I can type or use a pencil.”

      “Who the fuck writes with a pencil?” Lonnie flicked one of the yellow pills off the end table.

      “You know what I mean.”

      Lonnie fixed me with a serious gaze and flipped one of the pills right at my face.

      “Look, this isn’t a fun-time party-time negotiation here, baby. We’re not talking about your feelings or your poor little hand. Learn to type with your left hand or cut that one off and type with a hook.”

      “A hook?”

      “Or whatever. Maybe they have a robot hand. Look, you cashed the advance check for this book and you don’t even have a proposal. We’re being nice here. More than fair. You gave us a list of ideas and, frankly, your wizard books sucked. I say that as a publisher looking for wizard books. We are proactively seeking wizard books. They were just appallingly bad. A romance novel called Wizard Marriage”?

      “The amorous spell caster is an underutilized trope,” I replied, feeling a bit outclassed.

      “Trope? Slow down there, Proust. You’re a joke writer, so write something funny. Write me a funny book about the Internet.”

      He