Geocache This, Zeldar

Cole was going to need a costume. He didn't know whether "costume" was the right term, word or expression. But it didn't matter. Someone had to do something. As it was no one was doing anything. "Tights, maybe is what I need to say," Cole mused as he got off the elevator and began checking room numbers. It was a warehouse, Cole realized after a moment, and there weren't really any room numbers; there had barely been an elevator. So he stopped, gathered himself, breathed as his yoga/anger management instructor/guru had taught him for hours after plying Cole with wine, found his center, brought himself back into himself, felt good ... and then tried to imagine what an action figure's next move would be. He wasn't in any danger, but that didn't matter. He could be. He could be at any moment, any second, of any hour very much in harm's way, although two goats, one with a gimpy leg, and old rusted farm equipment hulking in the sunshine, like giant cicada shells which had been discarded, were all that confronted him. He could take one goat, but not two, a lesson which he had painfully and embarrassingly learned at a petting zoo once during a children's birthday party, when he had stepped around the corner to hide his chewing with a full mouth and to wipe off all of the icing on his face, in his hair and on the collar of his shirt.

A bell rang by itself behind him, the clapper pushed by the stiff wind. It startled him, but only momentarily. The feisty gusts of warm air blew dirt and debris up into Cole's face, so that he was momentarily blinded, and dropped down onto all fours, writhing in excessive agony amid the straw strewn all over the dirt floors. One of the goats, the smallest one with the gimpy leg, saundered up to Cole, where he sat spitting in his hands and brisky rubbing his eyes in a sawing motion, and began to pee on him.

"No, no, no, Mr. Whizbang," he said to himself, chuckling. "Do I look like a fire hydrant?" noting as he spoke that he was wearing a yellow slicker. "Touche," Cole said as he stood up and began brushing himself off, noticing as he did a little cubby, off to one side, in a far corner of the barn-like warehouse. There were sewing machines, a desk and filing cabinets. There were rolls of multicolored fabric, some of which sparkled. Some of which was dark, gray and black and shone like the sun hitting black pearl or the barrel of a gun made of graphite. That was his lady. The sparkles were too much, as were the larger rhinestones and sequins. The fringe was out. Paisley was way out. But he caught sight of his favorite color, turquoise, sticking out of a large assortment of stacked rolls of fabric, and immediately dashed over to it, yanking with frustration as tried and failed to pull it out. He liked the turquoise, but this was closer to aqua on closer inspection. A little too much green. Screw it. He liked the black and the charcoal gray, too, which both looked black, he had observed, depending on how the sun hits it.

Piping? You bet. A logo, an insignia, a trademark? Absolutely. He already had it in his head. Stretchy? There was no other way to go ... geocaching.