The Blue Jungle (10)
A noir novella in 10 chapters. "I've got a scoop for you, Naomi."
Naomi is a struggling reporter in LA. Gangsters kidnap her because their boss thinks only Naomi knows what happened to his daughter.
He may be right: Naomi covers the porn industry, where all secrets lead to the king of sleaze, Bobby Feathers.
Paid subscribers get access to the audio of the author’s audio version of THE BLUE JUNGLE (released as a separate post). Plus access to all serials on Dark & Stormy, including GAIJIN COWGIRL and STAR FALL PEOPLE.
And now…
THE BLUE JUNGLE: CHAPTER TEN
MEREDITH
The cold hiss of machinery. Eyes she doesn’t recognize behind blue surgical masks. Tightness in her face, pain in her body, confusion in her head.
The best way to keep yourself focused on your health is through positive reinforcement. There are ups and downs in keeping a health regimen that will need to be met with a rigorous attitude. But in addition to a rigorous attitude, you must pamper yourself as well! Try taking a soothing hot bath with lots of bubbles and candles.
She sees those faces every time she comes out of sleep. The lunar indifference of the fat man, the way the eyes of the one like a praying mantis light up when he hurts her.
She hears the waves as Obiwan Kenobi surfs across the ceiling.
And she imagines Naomi Sato and that’s when the bile makes her want to puke.
You may be in a quiet, reflective mood today. You could receive a communication from an old friend that sets you remembering the good old days of your youth. You can’t help but look at some of your pivotal decisions and wonder how your life could have been different had you made other choices. It’s pointless to play that game. Don’t wonder about ‘what if’. Embrace what you have.
The worst day in her life came about a week after a cleaner found her body in a dumpster, and two or three days, maybe, she thinks, after she first woke up.
Where’s my—where the FUCK is my fucking—where is my arm?
This is going to be a rather busy day for you, and you’re likely to love every minute of it. You can expect to meet many people as you go about your day. There will be side trips and detours that you weren’t anticipating, but they’re all the more delightful because of their spontaneity, like the unexpected lunch with a friend. Such stolen moments enrich your life.
The doctor showing her the gangly steel contraption, like she’s going to be the Terminator.
“The pain you’re experiencing may be due to poor tissue coverage. Your surgery may not have fully trimmed the bone at the end of your residual limb.”
What residual limb. The whole fucking thing is gone.
“This can cause you pain when you wear your prothesis. Now, Meredith, we can try some padding, but if that doesn’t work, then I would recommend a second surgery.”
“I’m not wearing that thing.” Except her jaw is still broken and her face is enmeshed in wire, and it comes out as “Immnaawwearinahin.”
The doctor smiles as kindly as possible. “Of course, it’s up to you. But you might be surprised, Meredith. Our patients can sometimes master the use of prosthetics in just a few weeks’ time. It will make a big difference in the quality of your life.”
Be careful of people who talk a great deal and promise the world but have a difficult time delivering the goods. You might get trapped today if you rely on people who simply don’t come through the way they said they would. Feel free to engage in social activities with partners, but don’t sign any major business deals with them at this time. Love is on the horizon!
She turns away. She’s done with crying in front of doctors.
In the end, the kindly doctor is replaced by a middle-aged man wearing a tie and carrying a clipboard who asks her about insurance. She doesn’t answer his questions. The V.A. had given her a scarlet letter, not a healthcare package.
There’s not enough in her bank account to make a difference. They discharge her stitched up with a bag full of pills and no prosthetics, no physio – but there’s a payphone where she can call a cab.
The pain is like nothing she imagined. But it’s just pain. It’s not like never being able to stay asleep matters. She’s not going back to X-tra. Stu didn’t even send flowers. Duke had sent a bouquet to her while she was still in the hospital, the only guy in the entire damn city who seemed to remember her. But that had been weeks ago.
What sucks the most is trying to shamble around her shitty studio apartment figuring out how to cook an omelette with one hand.
When she can’t figure that out, which seems to be most days, at least she’s learned to unscrew bottles of J.D. Untabbing a can of Coke is too hard so most days it’s just her and Jack. Love was on the horizon and now here it is.
Fate.
Your charm is usually a handy skill, but today it could really open a lot of exciting doors for you, especially if you’re going to be dealing with people from other cultures.
Watching T.V. and she can’t believe it, Naomi. Naomi’s picture on ABC7, and…Bobby Feather’s picture too, only it’s a mug shot, asshole’s holding a placard with his name on it.
She can’t make heads or tails of it. Meredith goes outside for the first time in a week. The sunshine is blinding. One T-shirt arm flaps in the wind. She makes it to the local grocery store and buys the National Enquirer and the Weekly World News, and hell, even the L.A. Times. Naomi would have approved.
Back home she spreads the tabloids across her unmade bed and tries to piece it together. Intrepid reporter goes undercover to unearth Bobby Feathers child-internet-porn conspiracy, Bangkok to Los Angeles.
Nothing about any Japanese goons or lez affairs.
Look at her. Glowing in those photos. Crazy bitch. Only now it sounds accusatory.
Nothing about me.
Meredith can’t stand to read the rest. She skips to the horoscopes.
If your patience for a fickle friend is running thin, contact them today and let them know that you aren’t going to stand for this much longer.
Meredith reaches for the phone.
“Duke, I need a favor.”
NAOMI
Even the perpetual haze over downtown L.A. couldn’t block this morning’s fresh breeze and lustrous sunshine. Naomi parked her new Toyota Prius in a lot just off East First Street in Little Tokyo. She changed from sneakers into pumps, checked her makeup in the rearview mirror, and grabbed her purse.
She walked past Nijiya Market and a pachinko parlor, crossed busy First Street and thought maybe today she’d treat herself to ramen at Daikokuya…not that she ever had time for lunch.
The street life gave way to Civic Center where she made for the proud art deco lines of the Los Angeles Times Building. Although the commute could be soul crushing, she still got a thrill from this final leg. She laced her laminated Times badge over her head as she walked up the steps.
The bullpen was busy all hours of the day, and was buzzing even at eight a.m., from the crappy coffee if nothing else. She threaded her way through the newsroom, the screens showing CNN and ABC7 muted beneath the office clatter. She found her cubicle, a minor disaster of notebooks and police records strewn around her telephone. She switched on her battered computer.
The good-looking sub-editor rolled his chair over. “Hey, I got you that address you were asking about.”
“Thanks.” He was always doing little favors for her, and she could tell he was working his way to getting her out for a drink one day. She didn’t mind the flattery, and would be happy to hang out with him, if only to find a nice, discrete way to let him know she had scheduled a date this Friday with Bethany from production.
“You bet,” he said. “Ready?”
She’d keep things professional.
Time for the morning editorial meeting. She gathered her notes to pitch her story idea on proposed laws to protect homeless children. Her phone rang.
“See you in there,” she said, picking it up. “Newsroom.”
“Naomi Sato?” asked the woman on the other line. The voice was thin and sounded like it took an effort just to say her name.
“Speaking.”
“I’ve got a scoop for you, Naomi.”
Cranks were an occupational hazard, but sometimes tips were real. She bit off the cap of her pen. “I’m listening.”
“You don’t recognize who this is?”
“Sorry. What’s your name please?”
“You should know who this is, Naomi.”
She listened carefully to the hiss and the labored breathing.
“Well, you got me. Can you tell me what it is you’re calling about?”
“The cops are auctioning Bobby Feathers’s place.”
“Oh yeah?” She was feeling creeped out by this conversation, but she shouldn’t be too surprised. She had become minorly famous for ten minutes – not even the prescribed fifteen – over B.F.’s downfall. She was still surprised by how many Angelenos followed this stuff.
“I think you should go up there, see for yourself.”
“Look, miss, ma’am, I appreciate the call but I have to go. The police selling off assets belonging to Bobby Feathers is not a matter of public interest.”
“Someone’s waiting for you there. Someone I think you miss.”
“Who is this? Can I get your name please?”
“Calls herself Eriko Tamaki. Ring a bell?”
Naomi saw the people crowding the table through the glass wall of the conference room. They would not wait for her. She could have put the phone down.
“Who’s calling?”
“The auction’s tomorrow and there won’t be anything left, Eriko won’t be around. Come tonight, or you’ll never see her again.”
Naomi stared dumbfounded at the telephone in her hand, emitting its negative tone.
Nobody knew about Eriko Okada, except Bobby Feathers, and he wasn’t talking. That had been the deal she had struck a few days after she had returned to the States.
After the shootout in Poipet, she hadn’t dared go back through Thailand and risk the wrath of Boon’s family. And there was no way she was setting foot in Japan so long as Okada was alive. But she still had Boon’s cash, and that was enough to make her way through Cambodia and fly back, via Singapore. It wasn’t that L.A. was home, she just couldn’t think of where else to go. She rented a cheap studio and got herself a used laptop. She spent two days typing up everything as best she could and printed it out at a nearby Kinko’s.
That afternoon she walked into the Times building and asked to speak with a reporter about the criminality behind one of the porn industry’s biggest players. She pitched it as investigative work by L.A.’s leading ex-pornalist, hoping they’d print it and pay her a few hundred bucks.
Two days later the editor offered her a reporter job, full time.
Two days after that she signed the lease on a furnished one-bedroom just off Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake. She started work the next Monday, and that night she drove home feeling exultant, walked up the stairs, unlocked the door, flicked on the lights, and would have screamed except someone waiting behind the door had clamped his hand over her mouth.
The Bobby Feathers exposé was slated to run Wednesday.
“I’d like to suggest some edits,” said Eriko Okada, wearing a tight-fitting navy business suit and skirt that rode her curves like Malibu waves. The six yakuza hoods frowned their intentions if Naomi disagreed.
“You’re not going to do something stupid, like scream,” Eriko asked.
Naomi shook her head.
The man standing behind her let go.
She should have been terrified. But if the Okadas were going to hurt her, they would have just gotten on with it.
And the same old twinge just looking at Eriko, the bobbed hair, the big eyes, the pert chin, and those languorous lips, it was all still there, vibrating all the way down to Naomi’s pussy. You could despise someone to the core, she knew, without changing everything, or anything, that you wanted from them.
“So, Okada-chan, you’re working for your father now?” she asked in her most polite Japanese.
“We’ve come to an arrangement now that he’s seen what I’m capable of. Ruthlessness may be a family trait, but it must still be demonstrated.” Eriko’s fingers touched Naomi’s cheek. “You helped make that possible. And you tried your best to keep me alive – in Bangkok, and again in Poipet. That’s why we’re going to let you tell the world about Bobby.”
There was probably no point asking how Eriko Okada knew this. She knew was all.
“Thank you,” Naomi said.
“But there will be no mention of me or my father. Mittsu and Yattsu are ronin, expelled from the Azumagumi organization, who traded honor for money to work for the Sucharbutra family in Thailand.”
“My editor will never agree to that, no matter what I do.”
“Which is why I’ve seen to it that the files in his office have gone missing. You’ll have to fill them in again, and if he asks, well, you’re a smart girl, Naomi. You’ll think of something.”
Naomi wracked her thoughts. Who else knew about Eriko, other than Bobby Feathers? No one except Boon, Pimples, and Meredith, and the dead weren’t sharing secrets.
“What if Bobby talks?” Naomi asked.
“We’ve seen to it that he won’t,” Eriko said, sashaying across Naomi’s tiny living room, high heels tapping the floorboards. “Not if he wants his prison time to be considerably more comfortable than he could otherwise expect.”
“And Bobby knows you’re talking to me.”
Eriko shrugged. “Would you prefer I resort to violence?”
“No.”
Eriko approached her again. “Then we’re agreed. Enjoy your new life, Sato.” She clasped Naomi’s face and kissed her, twinning her tongue with Naomi’s, and for a hot second a universe of possibility ballooned in Naomi’s mind. “You really are a sap.” Eriko stepped back and one of the men punched Naomi in the gut.
She doubled over, seeing stars.
Eriko said, “If I have to come back, these boys will rape you in the most inventive fashion, new holes and everything.”
Naomi woke up lying next to her own vomit.
Nobody in America would ever hear the name Okada.
MEREDITH
She took the bus from Torrance across the city towards Glendale. Ninety minutes of watching the city’s wretched. Women who hadn’t bathed screaming at their kids. Old men muttering to themselves. They all quieted down when they saw the one-armed wraith.
She was clean, at least for now. Jeans and bootlets covered what remained of the Milky Way down her leg. Her black hair was cropped short, so the galaxy’s outer tendrils could still be seen floating up the back of her neck. The goth look was gone, replaced by a plain, serious demeanor. The lines in her face were a little deeper, the bags beneath her eyes more pronounced. But she walked with purpose, one sleeve of her lightweight plaid shirt tucked around her waist.
Meredith alighted a few blocks from the gunshop. Muffled thuds from the range behind it punctuated the air.
The thirty-something white man in a Kid Rock T-shirt and Raiders cap seemed happy enough to just show her what he had beneath the glass counter. Her missing arm didn’t faze him.
“Now this is a beautiful sidearm,” he said, showing her a Smith & Wesson Shield 9mm. “Popular with the ladies.”
She lifted it, felt its weight.
“A little light,” she said.
“You aiming at self-defense, you could try the Glock 19…”
“I want something that’s no questions asked,” she told him. “I want to know it’ll put someone down.”
“Well, miss, just about any of these pistols’ll do that, if you know how to use em.”
She pointed to a Sig Sauer.
“That’s the P238, .380 caliber. Packs a punch.”
It felt good.
“We got a range out back if you want to test it out. Hey Clint, look out for me here, okay?” The friendly man came out from behind the counter with a noticeable limp and escorted her back to the range. A few people were practicing and even in headphones it was a cacophony.
He showed her a few tips for handling the weapon with only one hand. “Use your thumb to apply pressure along the botton of the beavertail…yeah, that’ll help give you that up-and-down recoil.” His fingers worked with hers. “And the pinky, super important for leverage.”
Her first round was a mess but the second time half her bullets found the target.
“You’re a fast learner,” he said back in the shop where she was struggling to get cash out of her wallet.
“I was Army.”
“Oh yeah? First Armored. Stationed in Germany.”
“Signals Corp, Eighty-Third Troop Command.”
“Those guys are in Falujah right now. You come back from that?”
She grinned like a trapped animal. “Uh, yeah. I mean, no.” Jesus Merry, get it together. “I was discharged before.”
“Me too. How I got my limp.”
“Fighting in Iraq?”
“Naw, a colonel backed his Humvee into me. Shattered pelvis. Wasn’t pretty.” She handed over two hundred bucks. “I’ll need to see some ID with that.”
She showed him her driver’s license. “Sorry to hear that.”
“You should have seen the Hummer.” He held her ID as though honoring the sky. “Meredith Pepper. Nice to meet you. I’m Steve.”
“Hi.” She slid the license back in her wallet.
“That’s a fine sidearm you got there. You come back here and practice any time, okay? Just ask for me.”
“Thanks,” she said, grabbing box with the pistol and some ammo and almost running out the door, as though his kindness contained a miasma of plague.
It was a half hour’s walk to the Glendale Starbucks and it left her exhausted, especially with her one arm occupied with the box. She stopped along the way when she passed a liquor store and added a bottle of Jim Beam to the cargo. By the time she reached her destination, Duke was already there, sipping a frappacino outside against his Audi TT convertible. The edges of his muscle tone had grown softer and round, and he’d allowed back a layer of short curls with a fade. He gave her a welcoming smile.
“Well look what the cat dragged in.”
“You’re getting fat,” she said.
“I’m a businessman now. Learned enough tricks from Bobby to run my own security and escort service.”
“Hope you didn’t learn too much.”
“No – uh, definitely not. You want a coffee?”
He bought her a latte to go. She put the box between her feet and he drove out of the parking lot.
“I appreciate this,” she told him above 50 Cent’s rhymes.
“As requests go it’s a weird one.”
“I know.”
“I guess if this is how you heal, this is how you heal.” He hesitiated. “I should have come by, checked in on you.”
“Yeah,” she said. “No. I wouldn’t have been any fun.”
“Well, I’m sorry, Meredith. Sorry about the whole damn thing.”
She had trusted his guilt to get what she wanted.
They climbed and dipped and climbed again, through Hidden Hills en route to Calablasas, until they reached the old familiar lane. There were no cars parked nearby and the garbage bins were empty. Police tape crisscrossed the double gates, partially obscuring the black shield emblem. From behind a yellow ribbon peeked the mother-of-pearl feather.
“So now you got me aiding and abetting a B&E,” Duke said, turning off the engine.
“Just punch in the code. No big deal, right?”
“Assuming they haven’t changed it.”
They got out, Duke lifting her box for her. “What the hell you got in here, Merry?”
“Scotch.”
He halted outside the mansion gates. “I just want to hear it straight. Whatever weird shit you got in your brain going on, you’re not going to do anything stupid.”
“I’m not getting you into trouble, if that’s what you mean.”
He gave her a long skeptical look.
“Come on, Dukie. I just need to work some stuff out.”
“Getting wasted in Bobby Feathers’s house is not anybody’s idea of therapy.”
She took the box with her one hand. “Since when am I just anybody?”
He shook his head with a grin. “Meredith Pepper.” He punched the door code and the doors clicked open.
“Thanks, Duke.”
“You want me to wait?”
“Nah. I’ll call a cab when I sober up. Go and run your business, rich guy.”
She wandered into the house. The Audi’s engine woofed and purred out of earshot, gone like the life she could have had, the things stolen from her.
Meredith left the front gates ajar.
NAOMI
She wolfed down takeaway chicken chow mein at her desk and wrapped up around six. She would have left earlier if she hadn’t been so busy. The sound of the calller’s voice surfaced with every pause. Eriko Tamaki, ring a bell?
It didn’t make sense. But did that matter? The reason her hands were shaking when she held the chopsticks was because someone out there was digging up dangerous ghosts.
But Eriko Tamaki, not Okada. That was the part that Naomi had the hardest time trying to understand. And she couldn’t believe Eriko herself was actually involved. Come tonight or you’ll never see her again. Naomi believed there was only one person in this world who could determine whether or not she’d see Eriko, and that was Okada herself.
She wanted to ignore it, pass it off as a crank call. Out of the question, though. This was a living threat to her safety. Her job. Her new life – the life she had always wanted. One she would kill for.
You talking to me? Boon might ask.
Or me? squeaked Pimples. Or us? intoned Bug Eyes and Sumo, and all the corpses in their wake…Obiwan Kenobi, Trat…Meredith, her friend. Her only friend from that lonely, frustrating time in her life, her first attempt at living in America.
Naomi nosed her Prius towards U.S. Route 101. The late-day skies burned orange. She tried some music, Linkin Park, Outkast, but she wasn’t in the mood and drove in silence.
The sky burned in afterglow as she pulled up to the mansion. The curving lane was silent. She saw a few windows lit up behind gated trees.
Naomi slung her purse over her shoulder and approached the house. The yellow police tape seemed to glow in the dark. She noticed the double gates were open. The compound gave no light.
OK, this is creepy.
She didn’t want to go in there. Not just because this was feeling like a horror flick, but because the memories churning to the surface were unsettling and humiliating.
If you don’t go in there, said Risa Nakamura, I will.
That’s what scared her the most. She hadn’t heard from Risa since…since Bangkok last year. Hadn’t needed to. Naomi had been kicking ass and taking names all on her own.
Naomi Sato, chin up, stepped forward. The gates parted with a cringe.
She didn’t know the house other than the route through the big entertaining room through to the pool out back. The fading light had just enough reach to softly outline the interior. She could make out the gaudy chandaliers and the leather furnishings, the mirrorball and, in one corner, a single woman’s high-heeled shoe, forlorn in encroaching darkness.
“Hello?” She meant to call out, but something caught in her throat and it came out more like a wimper.
Naomi pushed the back door open and stepped onto the porch. Beneath the dying light, the pool was a flat blackness. To one side, the white cabana curtains were still luminous. To the other, silhouetted against the purpling, was a figure.
This was beyond scary and Naomi made to turn and run.
“Naomi Sato,” the figure said, and it was a woman’s voice, American.
Naomi froze. The woman was skinny. She raised a bottle of liquor to her face and drank. That’s when Naomi realized the figure had only one arm.
Meredith.
No way. Impossible. Meredith is…
“Thought I was dead, didn’tcha.”
Naomi was too stunned to reply.
“But big famous reporter like you, didn’t bother to find out.” She threw the bottle into the pool, stirring that blank emptiness. “Just told ever-body, hey, I saved the children from the evil Bobby Feathers, ain’t I great.”
Naomi found her tongue. “But – but you were dead.”
“Left for dead, by those psychos, and by you.”
“Meredith,” she gasped, “I’m so happy you’re alive.”
“Liar.”
At that moment, Meredith was right. Naomi was terrified.
“I’m curious,” Meredith said, walking unsteadily around the pool. “You told all those stories about Bobby but never once did you mention Eriko. And yet she was the one who turned you inside out. And when I went asking about her, guess what I got?”
“I saw the photos.”
“Oh, you saw the photos. Wow, you must have it all figured out then. What it was like to be kidnapped and tortured. Lost half my teeth. Can’t walk right because of the broken bones in my feet. And, ooh look, I seem to be missing something.”
“Meredith, I…”
“Can’t work, can’t get a date, can’t stop the pain without getting shitfaced, can’t pay the rent on my shitty excuse of an apartment. All because of that little lover of yours who was turning tricks for Bobby.”
Naomi began to slowly back away. “Meredith, I swear, I thought they had killed you. I never meant to hurt you. I never—”
“Shut up! This ain’t about you, Naomi. You think you’re so smart, so clever, think you’re some kind of femme fatale badass.”
Eriko in Japanese: You really are a sap.
“Not me,” Naomi said. “Eriko.”
“What?”
“Eriko’s the femme fatale. I’m just the sucker.”
“Well suck on this.” Meredith reached behind and pulled out a gun. Naomi screamed and ran. The single blast ripped the air. Naomi winced and her shoes hit an outstretched chair leg, hidden in the darkness, her purse flew off and she slammed into concrete.
Naomi picked herself up, feeling the blood and scratches on her hands and knees, and turned around. At first there was no sign of Meredith. Then she saw her, lying prone by the pool.
“Meredith!” Naomi was paralyzed, not wanting to get shot, but not wanting to just leave her there. No movement.
Then: a very feeble “Shit.”
Naomi hurried to her side. The gun was loose in Merry’s fingers. Naomi pried it out, the barrel hot to touch. Meredith’s face was obscured.
“Can’t even shoot myself right,” Meredith said, the words mangled. Her face seemed to be split in two, but the bullet had missed her brain.
“You’re alive,” Naomi said, hardly believing it. “Crazy bitch.”
“Help me,” Meredith gasped, the ruins of her face darkening with new blood.
“Hang on, I’m calling 911.” Naomi ran back to get her purse but couldn’t see it in the darkness. She twirled until her foot kicked something. Trembling fingers, everything shaking. Fumbled for the Nokia cell phone. Dialled, looked up as she waited to get through. Made it. Told them everything, trying to keep her words clear and her mind focused.
Ambulence on the way.
“Help’s coming,” she said, kneeling by Meredith.
As she waited, she thought about what might come. Emergency surgery followed by weeks of reconstruction. At some point, Meredith would be telling people her story, explaining why she tried to kill herself, the strange events that had led her to this awful point.
She found a blanket inside and covered Meredith’s body.
“Don’t…leave…”
“I won’t,” Naomi said.
Naomi could tell people her friend was delusional. Had conflated Naomi’s fling with a Japanese girl with something sinister to do with Bobby Feathers. But how to explain why she got kidnapped and tortured in the first place?
Well, Meredith had recovered once already and hadn’t said a word. She could be trusted.
Except she had spent the past year brooding on her ill fortune, and blaming it on Naomi…why had she lured Naomi here, to Bobby Feathers’s mansion of all places? Had suicide been her Plan A? What would she want to tell the world if she pulled through this time?
I guess I’ll just have to trust her, Naomi thought. Just…see what happens.
You know what could happen, Risa said. You know the risk. To everything.
Yeah, Naomi said, kneeling by her friend, I know.
Meredith’s breathing made a whistling sound as it labored through newly exposed passageways. Naomi reached into her purse again and pulled out a light cotton shawl, which she patiently folded into thicker squares. She pressed down on what was left of Meredith’s face. She couldn’t look so she turned her head and watched the city lights shimmer over the infinity pool. When it was over, she folded the soiled shawl a final time and put it back in her purse and zipped it closed.
She walked across the silent patio to one of the loungers, stretched out, slipping off her pumps, and looked up at the night sky. Clouds reflected the city’s gaudiness below. Naomi clasped her hands behind her head and waited.
THE END. But…
If you’ve enjoyed this story, please:
Consider going paid to get all of Jamie Dibs’s novels here at Dark & Stormy. New serials are on the way!
Tell a friend to check out THE BLUE JUNGLE – I’ll keep it open for another month.
Finally, a big thank-you to everyone who has followed THE BLUE JUNGLE. I’ve had a blast serializing it on Substack, because you guys were along for the ride.