Day 27, 47,020 Words

 So close to the finish line I can already taste the champagne...

Here was have the final view of Jackie's Place through the eyes of Josh, who along with the other celebrities has arrived. Will they be able to rescue Danae? They will need more than Piquette to accomplish this quest!

Josh had thought that he was prepared for anything- he had already been through so much! The Toodie-Loo Detective Agency, the Romance Inn, the Jack Kerouac School for Experimental Vineyardery, drunk teenagers, a celebrity feud support group (which dredged up his own considerable shortcomings), the Gin Fizz-Tival, Piquette!? How much weirder could things get? he had thought. How very naïve the Josh of five minutes ago had been. How hopelessly, desperately naïve. But then, Jackie’s Place had a way of making everyone feel that way.

To describe Jackie’s Place as absolute mayhem would have been an insult to absolute mayhems everywhere. It could only be described as an utter carnival of madness. He noticed a table of economists wearing matching blue t-shirts, emblazoned with loopy white scrawl which read “I Get My Freak On With Econ” against the backdrop of a red graph with an arrow shooting up and up and up. Ugh. Josh hated smug economists and their non-scientific theories and their stupid big business models of continual growth. This particular group of economists seemed to be engaged in a no-holds barred game of flip cup against a team of oddly dressed fake tourists, who kept quoting Jane Austen novels and talking about various adaptations of her work for film and screen (from what he could overhear). There were adults dressed as dogs interspersed throughout the bar, including on the stage, where a band called Lab Jam was performing what he had to admit was a heart rending version of ‘Unleash Me’ to the tune of the moving ballad ‘Release Me’. There was a group of obscenely handsome men, who had clearly just emerged from a random pants generator. They were loudly shouting ‘Cheers Butterbeers!” as they clinked their paper-bagged cans of PBR against one another with relentless good humour. Nearby was a table of hockey mascots, who seemed dangerously on the verge of a beer-throwing competition. Josh hoped it didn’t come to that, but if it did, he was rooting for Gritty from Philly, who has been embraced by anarchists (and Josh, himself) as a mascot of resistance. Most chilling of all was the specials board, which needed to be seen to be believed. Apparently the special du jour was a pizza topped with marinated carottes, white onions, mushrooms, fresh coriander and sauce a l’avocat. This experimental concoction, no doubt the result of a fever dream by a student at the Jack Kerouac School for Disembodied Culinary Arts, was nightmarishly named ‘Classic Pizza.’ It was utterly macabre.

“What fresh hell is this?” he muttered, continuing to look around the bar, his eyes wide and unbelieving. He could see that his celebrity comrades, with the exception of the Rock, who could always be counted on to take everything in stride, were equally overwhelmed. Richard Gere had turned back toward the door they had just come through, and was fruitlessly trying to open it and return to the Romance Inn. Of course it was locked. Of course it was. There was no going back, not for any of them.

Even if he could have, Josh had no intention of going back without Danae, so he shook his head, gathered his wits, and plunged through the crowd after Gordon, who was making a beeline for the bar and the surly barkeep, whose sullen glare was squarely fixed on the recently arrived group of celebrities.

“I see you’ve brought company,” the surly barkeep said as Gordon reached him with Josh close behind. “I wish you would have warned me, I would have tidied the place up,” he said, in a strange, creaky, whisper voice.

Gordon looked around at the communitas, who were all slowly making their way to the front of the bar. “I figured you could use all the help you could get- you’re not as spry as you used to be, old man,” Gordon replied. Maeve thought that was a bit rich, coming from a man who was clearly on the wrong side of 40, but she let it go. It was still a sick burn, she had to admit. Josh, having grown impatient with the exchange of pleasantries, interjected.