Make Believe Zodiac Tattoo

She told me her sign was Octopus and that I should back the hell up. What was I even doing here in this isolated disco club off the suburban beltway? A paradise for low-level trucking executives and lackadaisical black-clad malcontents, The Habolita was not my usual well lit, coffee and hashbrowns kind of dive.

That's not even a real sign I told her. You show me an octopus twinkling up above and I'll stop asking about where John High Tooth's size twelves are currently treading. You're lookin' too high chachi she said and then pulled up her tank top to reveal rough tentacles wrapping around her belly button. A pale blue octopus wearing spectacles and smoking a black pipe stared plaintively up at me. Wisps of gray smoke curled around its fashionable mustache.

OK little one, I get it, self-prescribed philosophies are nothing new in my book. What does it mean? She turned her milky, hashed-out eyes on me and said it meant she was spiritual, but easily annoyed and that, for the last time, she hadn't seen John High Tooth since he disappeared from her bungalow over three months ago.

Great cats! Another dead-end. Who would have ever thought the search for a missing Diamond Encrusted Cougar Figurine could be so much trouble. Not me, man-o-live, not me...