Harlequin Valentine

by Neil Gaiman

  There was a scrap of dark meat on one of the plates, beside some half-finished ketchup-covered hash browns.

  It looked almost raw… but I dipped it into the congealing ketchup and, when Harve’s back was turned, I picked it off the plate and chewed it down. It tasted metallic and gristly, but I swallowed it anyhow, and could not have told you why.

  A blob of red ketchup dripped from the plate onto the sleeve of my white uniform, forming one perfect diamond.

  I called across the kitchen. “Hey, Charlene, happy Valentine’s Day.

  And then I started to whistle.

  * * *

  [*]Character in the Commedia dell’arte who always gets caught and punished every time Harlequin plays tricks. He dresses all in white, and his face is white as well. Sometimes he is mute. He loves, and longs, and wants. As the English Harlequinade progressed Pierrot became more and more the Clown, but his love for Columbine remains unrequited.

  [†] The Doctor is a character of the Commedia dell’arte. His character is a man of vast learning, who knows everything and understands nothing. There is no record of his ever curing anyone of any disease; Doctor, in the Italian, merely indicates a man of learning.

  [‡] An elderly miser in the Commedia dell’arrte whose fate is forever to be fooled.