Akhmed and the Atomic Matzo Balls. Gary Buslik

took an airy drag, held his breath, ingurgitated, exhaled a limp thread of happy smoke. Not that he was happy.

      He strained and strained but only managed a baby-size poop. He was seldom at a loss for either brilliant ideas or words (although getting stoned did tend to degrade his otherwise prodigious and astucious vocabulary), but this Karma beast had him mentally constipated to full blockage. Diane was a reasonably lucid woman. Not in his league of lucidity, of course, but not altogether obtuse. How could she not have seen the patently obvious? How could she possibly think her daughter was in the same cosmos as “basically good”? How could even a mother be so myopic, even if Karma was her only offspring and apparently raised under the burden of pathological guilt?

      The sun was setting, and the rooftops were the color of tomato juice. They gave Leslie appetence for a bloody Mary. He assumed it was the broccoli he’d had for dinner at the Seasons that was binding him. A bit of vodka might help. Couldn’t a reasonably intelligent progenitor tell that she had given birth to the Antichrist? That her daughter was the most self-centered, loathsome, bullying, condescending, arrogant, narcissistic, piggish, materialistic, solipsistic, acquisitive, shallow, callous, and, in general, miserable wretch on the face of the earth?

      He shivered thinking about his meeting last night with Diane, Karma, and the future Mr. Karma. He winced with the recollection of having pretended to be enjoying their company. His viscera knotted at the prospect of having to continue the charade—though persist he would (having often assured Chancellor Beebe, while massaging her feet, that when it comes to raising funds to perpetuate their progressive curriculum, as the great Lenin said, “the end always justifies the means”).

      How was it possible that he, and even Diane for that matter, could have spawned that ogress, Charon, Chimera, satyr, Minotaur, griffon, gargoyle, flying monkey? In his bathroom overlooking Mr. & Mrs. T-colored roofs, as he tried to squeeze out another broccoli-bound poop while lighting a fresh kiff (unlike most English Ph.D.s, he could actually do more than one task at the same time), Professor Fenwich pondered this terrifying question. It was not a rhetorical question, for Diane had assured him that—strictly to test for any latent genetic diseases—after Karma’s birth she had lab-tested the baby’s spit relative to Les’s own drool, a dried sample of which Diane had kept solely as a wistful memento of their love affair (unlike Monica Lewinsky, who had kept that crusty dress spooge as legal evidence), and Les believed her. If he was anything, it was a judge of character, and Diane was simply too idealistic, flower-childish, and simple-minded to be disingenuous, devious, and deceitful. Although he did suggest having a look-see at that lab report.