Still Life by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Still Life

Page 205

must deploy the lull and bomb tactic; ritual misdirection followed by emotional revelation.

The Annotator's Footnote Coup

The Annotator arrived in a cloud of italicized dust, wielding a quill that hummed with the energy of unresolved citations. His cloak was stitched from rejected margins, and his boots left behind tiny asterisks wherever he walked. He spoke y in parentheticals, and when he cleared his throat, it sounded like a bibliography reorganizing itself.

The Bureau of Unhelpful Gestures was mid-ritual when he entered-Sir Flinchington was bowing to a mirror, Lady Sigh was forecasting "emotional drizzle," and Finn had just unlocked a door that led to a room full of locked doors.

The Annotator paused, surveyed the scene, and whispered:

"(See Appendix B for the emotional implications of this tableau.)"

Gregory the chandelier groaned in Latin.

The Archivist, sensing danger, deployed the lull; a slow, meandering anecdote about a sneeze that once disrupted a coronation. But the Annotator was unmoved. He began annotating the ritual in real time, footnoting every gesture, sigh, and