One of these items was not just some souvenir, but an Ochiba—a blue Koi fish extraordinary due to its luminosity, colour, and girth. While in Osaka he had purchased the fish, transportation of which back to his trophy room had been tremendously costly in cash and headaches. But sitting at home, in his chair reconstructed out of wood from Gertrude Stein’s outhouse, the sense of self-satisfaction Trevor received when gazing upon his blue Koi, “Eliasberg,” made it entirely worth all the trouble.

When Deborah Champski-Five had read of Trevor Dickington and his fish Eliasberg in Fish Aficionado and Tartar Sauce Monthly, she thought little of it. She almost flung the magazine aside before something caught her eye: she and Dickington resided in the same city.  Mere days before she read of Trevor, her boss at Lost Pets Anonymous Pet Supply and Breedhouse had posted the managerial position for the Barnyard and Immobile Pets division, a position she yearned for. Her boss had posted the tantalizing challenge: “He or She who surprises me the most in the next week will find themselves a front-runner for the position.”  And so, as Deborah clutched the magazine, thinking of her boss and Dickington and Eliasberg and tartar sauce, her mind began to salivate.

Chapter Four: 26 Children in a Getaway Vehicle

Lawrence Fountaingale was making his rounds on a brand new route. The School Bus Drivers Klan, his employer, had moved him to one of the more cushy routes in the city due to his immaculately clean buses, twenty-two years of service with no serious traffic accidents, and no complaints of pederasty.

The bus was nearly empty but the kids were already screaming. Kids on school buses scream. It took Lawrence his first four years of service to stop trying to understand why. One of his first pick-ups on the corner of Upton & Greenspell was Marvin Yalter, the sole child at that stop. Marvin walked nine blocks and past two stops in order to be picked up as early as possible.