It's just before Christmas, and the Davenports are living back on Triggerfish Lane, where they first met Serge. Martha is still irritating, but I was able to tolerate her better in this one than some of the others. Jim has a job as a "consultant" of the sort companies bring in to fire people when they are restructuring. The G Unit are living in a nursing home, and bored silly and looking for adventure. And Serge and Coleman? Well ...
"Let's try skipping. You see someone skipping, and you wish wars would stop. Children skip all the time, but you become an adult and forget to skip. Let's skip."
"Wait up!" Coleman skipped alongside Serge. "But I still don't get this elf thing. How can we be elves if the mall didn't hire us?"
"And that's what everyone thinks." Serge skipped and waved at curious shoppers. "But there's no law that says you can't just unilaterally decide to be an elf, buy a costume, and hit the mall. That's the whole key to life: Fuck the conventional wisdom on elves."
"So then that makes us..."
"That's right: wildcat elves."
"But, Serge, what if someone says something?"
"What are they going to say?" Serge stopped skipping. "It's like clipboards. You walk around all smart and serious, writing on a ckipboard, and people stand back in respect. Or orange cones. You can buy them at any Home Depot. Then you set them out according to your needs, and the public thinks, 'He must be official. He's got orange cones.' Those are the Big Three: clipboards, orange cones, elf suits. People don't question ... I need coffee. There's the Coffee Circus."
At first this one was giving me flashbacks to Triggerfish Twist and Atomic Lobster, neither of them favorites. But it got better, and was just a hell of a lot of fun. I know, I say that about every Dorsey novel, but that's because they are. When Elves Attack is a short, feel-good holiday story with sex, drugs, stalkers, and in-laws.
