Chapter 35
The same afternoon Dirk Gently awake, also in hospital,
suffering from mild concussion, scrapes and bruises and a
broken leg. He had had the greatest difficulty in explaining,
on admittance, that most of his injuries had been caused by a
small boy and an eagle, and that really, being run over by a
motorcycle courier was a relatively restful experience since it
mostly involved lying down a lot and not being swooped on every
two minutes.
He was kept under sedation – in other words, he slept –
for most of the morning, suffering terrible dreams in which Toe
Rag and a green-eyed, scythe-bearing giant made their escape to
the north-east from Valhalla, where they were unexpectedly
accosted and consumed by a newly created, immense Guilt God
which had finally escaped from what looked suspiciously like an
upturned refrigerator on a skip.
He was relieved to be woken at last from this by a cheery,
“Oh it’s you, is it? You nicked my book.”
He opened his eyes and was greeted by the sight of Sally
Mills, the girl he had been violently accosted by the previous
day in the cafи, for no better reason than that he had, prior
to nicking her book, nicked her coffee.
“Well, I’m glad to see you took my advice and came in to
have your nose properly attended to,” she said as she fussed
around him. “Pretty roundabout way you seem to have taken but
you’re here and that’s the main thing. You caught up with the
girl you were interested in did you? Oddly enough, you’re in
the very bed that she was in. If you see her again, perhaps you
could give her this pizza which she arranged to have delivered
before checking herself out. It’s all cold now, but the courier
did insist that she was very adamant it should be delivered.
“I don’t mind you nicking the book, really, though. I
don’t know why I buy them really, they’re not very good, only
everyone always does, don’t they? Somebody told me there’s a
rumour he had entered into a pact with the devil or something.
I think that’s nonsense, though I did hear another story about
him which I much preferred. Apparently he’s always having these
mysterious deliveries of chickens to his hotel rooms, and no
one dares to ask why or even guess what it is he wants them
for, because nobody ever sees a single scrap of them again.
Well, I met somebody who knows exactly what he wants them for.
The somebody I met once had the job of secretly smuggling the
chickens straight back out of his rooms again. What Howard Belt
gets out of it is a reputation for being a very strange and
demonic man and everybody buys his books. Nice work if you can
get it is what I say. Anyway, I expect you don’t want to have
me nattering to you alt afternoon, and even if you do I’ve got
better things to do. Sister says you’ll probably be discharged
this evening so you can go to your own home and sleep in your
own bed, which I’m sure you’ll much prefer. Anyway, hope you
feel better, here’s a couple of newspapers.”
Dirk took the papers, glad to be left alone at last.
He first turned to see what The Great Zaganza had to say
about his day. The Great Zaganza said, “You are very fat and
stupid and persistently wear a ridiculous hat which you should
be ashamed of.”
He grunted slightly to himself about this, and turned to
the horoscope in the other paper.
It said, “Today is a day to enjoy home comforts.”
Yes, he thought, he would be glad to get back home. He was
still strangely relieved about getting rid of his old fridge
looked forwand to enjoying a new phase of fridge ownership with
the spanking new model currently sitting in his kitchen at
home.
Then was the eagle to think about, but he would worry
about that later, when he got home.
He turned to the front page to see if there was any
interesting news.