98.

   "You're all filthy! Come!" The matchmaker ordered us into a tub. Why not? I thought. A kind of spa. As she began to scrub us, I relaxed and opened my heart. “A talking crocodile introduced me to a girl in a balloon made of banker skins. She took me and the dogs in the balloon on all kinds of adventures to teach me how we Americans have screwed over everything south of the border for the last fifty years. We were attacked by a socialite cow, met an amorous barman who told us about the bloodsucking International Monetary Fund, were chased out of Buenos Aires by murderous green politicians and ended up in a cave full of feckless patriots, singing mummies, the Mighty Wurlitzer and a man eating centipede who told us democracy was nothing more than a tiny candle on the shit cake of humanity. We were saved by a sarcastic geoglyph who danced on the mountaintops ranting and raving like a preacher full of bourbon. He told us to come here but we were jumped by a buck naked purple end timer. My girl and I were separated, and I don’t know if she’s alright.”
   “My goodness, that’s quite a story.”, said our hostess. “When I was young, I had adventures like that. I was fighting the for the Sandanistas in Nicaragua. We met a politician sent by your President Ronald Reagan, 'La Bruja', the witch. He throttled one of our officers. I crushed his balls. I fought for the Tupamaro in Uruguay. We captured Senior Mitrione, the American from your State Department who demonstrated his torture techniques on homeless people. I put two bullets in his head. Your president Richard Nixon, ‘La Nana’, The Washerwoman said of him, ‘His devoted service to the cause of peaceful progress in an orderly world will remain as an example for free men everywhere.’ Isn’t that a lovely eulogy for a sadistic murderer?" She dried us, fed us a warm meal and ordered us into an ancient brass bed. Its feather mattress swallowed us whole.