“Okay, don’t tell me Bird Brain,” he requested to his apparent friend at the main drag. “Okay, *there’s* the main door, the Yang and the Yin. I, er, have just erupted from the Flea Market which is my home. My *work* home — ahem, I do not *live* underwater, see, heh heh. I am not a fish myself, har.”
“Yeah, tell it to the bartender,” and Bird Brain walked away with this for a moment, avoiding the old man’s ramblings per usual. “Tell it to the bartender,” was local slang meaning, “go talk to someone else about your problems that gives a sh-t.” Or something along those lines.
“So we’re lost.” Parasol was thinking she could do better than this by herself. Perhaps the old man is senile. How would someone with even a slight case of dementia cope in this maze of a town. They couldn’t!
The fish butcher licks his index finger, then holds it in the air, as if testing the wind. The same finger then points toward where they just came from. “*That* way,” he exclaimed confidently, and began to walk. Parasol obviously didn’t follow. And, actually, he didn’t expect her to. The butcher knew the flea market and his included underwater work spot well enough. That was his world. On a regular basis, he would come out and ask Bird Brain (limited to his own world around this particular leaning pole) directions to this or that place. It was a routine they shared. And always the closer: “Go tell it to the bartender.”
The butcher indeed lived in the flea market. He existed underwater. And, by this point, was probably a fish himself. But he likes to forget this every once in a while and come up for air (but not for long).
Parasol was on her own again.
Sunklands 