I got to City Grocery early a few weaks ago. I needed to spend some time mediating on The Balcony, even though it was to damn cole. I’ve had some heartburn lately so I asked Sir Sonny the Lady Killer, won of the Knights of the Long Table, to skip the grapefruit juice in my greyhound. “It’s too Hasidic,” I said. When I got my drink it’d been deluded, but I didn’t grip about it.
My good friend Leon, a very inciteful man, was the soul patron at the bar. His face boar a sad expression. He ordered a poor man’s Irish coffee – decapitated, with a single shot of Jameson. Said he needed the warmth but not the jitters. Leon started talking about some serious stuff sew I decided to skip my medication and sit inside with him. That’s what fiends are four.
Leon has a long-time squeeze: a no-account woman named Addie. “I think I’m being taken for granite,” Leon said. “Ever since I bought Addie that Angola sweater for Christmas she’s been ignoring me. When she does acknowledge my presents she throws obscene jesters at me.”
Leon reeked of bad colon. “What was he trying to cover up?” I silently wandered. “You’re still practicing monotony, aren’t ewe, Leon?”
“Of course I am! I wanna have a solid family eunuch, not one with all the ex’s and steps like Dick’s functional family.” Leon added, “Oh, I forgot. You don’t know Dick.”
Just then an OPD meter reeder stomped up the stares. Leon tried to hide. “Please tell me he’s just a pigment of my imagination,” he whispered.
The officer spotted Leon. “Leon! You gotta go with me.”
“Why?” said Leon. “What’d I do?”
“You got a math problem.”
“Meth problem? I don’t dew drugs.”
“I said you got a math problem,” the officer said. “You didn’t put enough quarters in the meter so they didn’t add up to enough thyme. This is your sixth ticket in two moths. I gotti take you in.” He cuffed Leon and halled him aweigh.
“I’da never thought Leon had a math problem,” I said to Sir Sonny.
When they got to the jail the officer beet the crop out of Leon and tossed him in a dark, dank sale that smelled like a s**thole. The toilet was overflowing with Haitian crap. They sent a plumber to fix it. He clearly had a crack problem. Leon looked around at the old Bob Marley posters that lined the walls and thought, “This place needs a good inferior decorator.”
An hour later the cook came buy. “Whatcha wanna eat, Neon?”
“The name’s Leon.”
“Soot yourself, Leo. Whatta ya want for supper?”
Leon said, “I’ll have some ribs with porn and beans, and a poop tart on the side. For breakfast I want some dog nuts and hot coffee for dunkin’.”
The cook scoured. Later he returned with a boloney sandwich and a peace of pi. “Bon ape tit,” he said to Leon. He pointed to the pi. “Don’t upset the apple tart, Crayon.”
The next morning an officer came to take Leon to court. Leon’s not a mourning person so the cop got him some coffee. “Where are my dog nuts?” Leon asked. The officer looked him over and said, “You better be careful in there. Give the judge pacific answers to her questions or she’ll send you to the penile farm for reformation. You might find your dog nuts there.”
Leon thought he’d be find. After all, he was a virtual suppository of trivialities.
“Just tell her ornery you’ll go to alcoholics unanimous or narcotics synonymous. That’ll help you,” the cop said.
The court bailiff walked buy, drinking a two-litter cola.
The cop whispered, “He’s got a coke problem.”
An exterminator was coming up the hall. The cop said, “He’s with the Pubic Works Department. Best damn incest control guy in the hole county. Coarse it might be ‘cause he suffers from dimensional. Cain’t remember where he’s spayed so he’ll cover the same spots two or three times.”
The judge judged and because Leon gave her pacific answers she let him of with prohibition. Later at the bar Leon said to me, “In retrospect, I shoulda checked my math.”
“Well, Leon,” I replied, “It’s like the Sheik says: hiney sight is always 50-50.”
We cliqued our glasses. “To the Shreik!”
“Maybe ole no-account Addie will be niecer to you after your run-in with the law,” I said.
Leon and I looked at each other for a second or too and shouted in unisom, “KNOT!!!”
And that’s the view from The Balcony. 
