“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part 167: double

Towards what one may only hope is the tail-end of perhaps the longest day in recorded literature (“Makes Joyce’s Ulysses look like a walk around the block” -- Harold Bloom), our memoirist Arnold Schnabel was last seen with his friend Josh in the lobby of the lovely Chalfonte Hotel, in the quaint seaside resort of Cape May NJ...

(Please go here to revisit the preceding chapter of this Gold View Award™-winning 26-volume epic, or go here for the beginning, which starts in the middle.)

So we went through the lobby, down the little side hall, and opened the door into the King Edward Room. The place was pretty full still, but oddly not noisy for a bar, thanks to its old-school absence of a jukebox, TV or radio. It felt odd to think that I had been here for the first time just the night before last, with Dick Ridpath. It seemed like another lifetime, but then all at once it seemed like this lifetime, because there at the far left of the bar sat Dick himself, talking what looked to be intently with some other guy. The other guy was turned toward Dick and away from Josh and me, so I couldn’t get a good look at him, except to see he was wearing the same kind of polo shirt that my mother always buys for me at Sears; he struck me as somewhat oafish-looking somehow, perhaps even cretinous, although I should have been hard-pressed to tell exactly how he looked this way.

“You know those guys?” said Josh.

“The one fellow I do,” I said. “The one facing more toward us. He’s a friend of mine, Dick Ridpath.”

“Another friend! Mr. Popularity here.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m a regular --” I couldn’t think of anyone who had a lot of friends. “Oscar Levant?”

“That’s you all right, Arnold, a regular Oscar Levant. You want to go say hi?”

“Well, he seems awfully deep in conversation with that other fellow.”

“You don’t know him?”

“No,” I said, slowly I suppose.

“What,” said Josh.

“I don’t know,” I said. “He looks -- weird.”

“All I can see is the back of his head. How is he weird?”

“I don’t know, just something about him. But I’m sure it’s just me.”

“I want that beer. You want to go say hi, or what?”

“No, I don’t want to interrupt.”

“Okay, great, look, there’s a couple of stools down there,” he said, indicating the opposite end of the bar from where Dick and his companion sat.

Two ladies were sitting on the stools near the empty seats, and as we got near them Josh said, smiling in that way he has, “Are these seats occupied, ladies?”

“Oh, no, go right ahead,” said one lady.

“Sit away!” said the other one.

“Great,” said Josh. He took the stool closest to the two women, (and I of course sat down in the other one, preferring to sit, rather than stand there, like an idiot). “Can I buy you two ladies a drink?” Josh asked.

“Sure,” said the first one, who was sitting closest to Josh.

“Absolutely,” said the other one.

“Great, what are you drinking?”

“Old,” said the one.

“Fashioneds,” said the other.

“Great,” said Josh, tapping his cigarette into the same ashtray the first woman was using.

As usual with Josh the bartender was right there the moment he sat down, if not several seconds before.

“What’s your pleasure, my lord?”

“Oh, none of that ‘my lord’ stuff,” said Josh. “I’m a human being just like you now.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Call me Josh.”

“Okay. Josh.”

“And your name is -- wait -- don’t tell me. Let me riffle through the old mental card file a second. George?”

“Well --”

“No, not George. Harry, right?”

“Close, sir.”

“Josh.”

“Close, Josh.”

“What is it?”

“Jerry, sir, I mean, Josh.”

“Jerry? Oh, well, okay -- anyway, Jerry, would you make us four -- what are they?” He turned to the two ladies, who were hanging on his every word. “Fashions?”

“Fashioned,” said the first woman.

“Old Fashioned,” said the other.

“Old Fashioned,” said Josh, turning back to the bartender. “Four of them, please.”

This time I didn’t even bother to protest. I knew what little good it would do me. But fortunately there didn’t seem to be a team of heavyweight wrestlers around who would hold my arms back and force the drink down my throat.

“A glass of seltzer water for me, too, please,” I said, “A large one.”

“Four Old Fashioneds,” said the bartender, “coming right up.”

“And a seltzer,” I said.

“Right. One seltzer back,” said the bartender, and he went away.

“So, ladies,” said Josh, “allow me introduce myself and my friend. This is Arnold.”

“Hi, Arnold,” said the first woman. She was blond.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hiya,” said the other woman, who was also a blonde. “I’m Muhhanna.”

I know Muhanna couldn’t be her name, but that’s what it sounded like.

“And I’m Berootha,” said the first one, and, again, I know it wasn’t really Berootha, but that’s what will have to do for the time being, and quite possibly for ever. “And you are?” she said to Josh.

I just knew he was going to forget again and say his real name, so I burst in, “This is Josh,” trying to sound not psychopathic but only perhaps slightly socially inept.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Josh to the ladies. I noticed he didn’t say their names, so maybe he hadn’t quite caught them either. He did rise politely from his seat and shake their hands though, one at a time.

The women were forty I guess, somewhere around there in that first blush of middle age. They seemed to enjoy Josh’s attentions, despite his dirtied and rumpled clothes, his long hair and stubbly beard. Despite his obvious drunkenness too, I might add.

And despite his friend with the scraped knees and arm and hand.

Josh sat back down again and suddenly turned to me.

“Oh, you wanted food, Arnold. What would you like?”

I was looking down the length of the bar, to where Dick and his friend were still deep in conversation. His friend’s face was now in profile, and now he seemed really and strangely familiar.

“Arnold,” said Josh. “What would you like to eat, buddy?”

I couldn’t answer, because I had just realized that the fellow Dick was talking to so intently down there at the other end of the bar was none other than myself.

(Continued here, and way beyond all reasonable expectations. Kindly look to the right hand column of this page to find an interminable list of links to all other available episodes of Arnold Schnabel’s Gold View Award-winning Railroad Train To Heaven©. A reminder: the deadline’s approaching, so be sure to send in those cards and letters on Arnold’s behalf to the Nobel Prize Committee today!)

“Uncle Buddy’s House”, Chapter 17: pool

Our roguish hero Buddy is now safely back home in the familial manse in Hollywood, having rescued his daughter Liz from an abusive boyfriend…

(Go here to review our previous chapter, or here to go to the beginning of this “rollicking good read” -- J.J. Hunsecker, in “The Ladies Home Journal”.)

When he came back in Deirdre was sitting in the living room with her laptop on her lap.

“Doing homework?”

“Writing e-mails.”

Okay.

“Did you have dinner?”

“I had a veggie burrito after field hockey.”

“Great. Uh, everything okay at school?”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you. What the hell did you say to Mother Mathilde?”

“I -- uh -- I probably -- sometimes my mouth works a lot quicker than my brain does.” Putting it mildly. “How is she acting toward you?”

“As if I’m not there.”

“You cool with that?”

“Sure. I have nothing to say to that fascist old dyke. Is Liz moving back in?”

“I -- uh -- yeah, I guess so, for, uh -- I don’t know. I guess so. Yeah --"

“So she’s addicted again.”

“Well, supposedly she’s just been drinking this time.”

“Oh,” said Deirdre.

“Yeah,” said Buddy.

“Hm.”

“What?”

“Just ‘hm’.”

“Oh. Okay.”

She started tapping at her keyboard.

“Debbie Greenberg likes you by the way,” she said, not looking up.

“You think so?”

“I know so. Do you like her?”

She stopped typing and looked up at Buddy.

“Sure I like her.”

“But do you like her that way?”

“Um --”

“Don’t fuck her over, Uncle Buddy.”

“What? What do you mean --”

“You know exactly what I mean. Debbie’s a nice lady. Not one of your actress or P.A. bimbos.”

“All right, look --”

“It was different with my mom. With her I don’t blame you. Not too much, anyway.”

Buddy paused.

Deirdre looked at him.

“Okay,” said Buddy. “Uh, look, I’m gonna swim. I need some exercise.”

“Fine,” said Deirdre, and she lowered her gaze to her laptop screen.

****

Buddy decided to swim as many laps as he could, and as he swam, occasionally spitting out bits of organic matter, one of the things he thought about was how he was thinking about Debbie Greenberg instead of about Liz and her problems. And not only about Debbie, but about what Deirdre had said about Debbie and him, and about him, and then he thought about the woman in the Nomad last night, and about Marlene, and about Marlene’s body, and then he thought some more about Debbie, and her body -- okay, Marlene, what was her story? Divorced, with a kid. Debbie, too, divorced with kid, a little girl -- Rachel? no, Ruth, Ruthie, whatever, it was chaos. People hooking up, propagating, breaking up, propagating again…

And Joan -- all right, why the fuck had he given a fuck when that bitch walked out? Joan had driven him nuts. She had bored him to tears. Okay, he had been madly in love or whatever the fuck it was with her at one time, enough of what it was to break up his first marriage. And then of course he had gotten less and less madly in what it was with her. But on the other hand he’d fallen more and more in whatever with Deirdre and she wasn’t even his own kid, it was weird, but he had to admit it, he loved Deirdre more than he loved either Philip or Liz, not that he didn’t love Philip or Liz, but, oh fuck it...but -- what if Joan came back? This was possible. And the thing is, with all her idiocies, he was used to Joan. He could live with Joan. He had lived with Joan quite contentedly really, for twelve years. He had always looked forward to coming home to Joan, to Joan and Deirdre. And Joan was funny, funny ha ha, not always intentionally funny, true, but a constant source of amusement nonetheless, nearly constant, and a great cook too. Oh, sure, he wasn’t sexually attracted to her anymore and hadn’t been for years, but who cared about that? Sex wasn’t everything. You could say he loved Joan. Yes. Definitely. In his fashion. You could say...and anyway at least with Joan he would have Deirdre around.

So, what if...no, forget it...fuckin’...

After forty-six laps in the dark murky pool his thinking hadn’t got any more profound, and he realized that he felt like he was going to have a heart attack if he didn’t stop swimming right now, so he hauled himself out of the pool and collapsed on his back on the tiles, gasping what fiery painful final breaths might reasonably be supposed to feel like and staring up at the spinning stars, wondering if this was what it was for him to die. Well, it happened to everybody, and you were a damn fool if you thought you would get it all figured out before you croaked...

Philip stood over him, a cigarette in his hand.

“Christ, Dad, are you okay?”

A chest-heaving moment or two, then Buddy said, or croaked:

“Yeah.”

“You’re not like having a heart attack, right?”

“No. Such. Luck. Just. Did. Fifty laps.”

Okay so he exaggerated the number.

“What’re you, fuckin’ nuts?”

“I know. It won’t. Happen again.”

“So -- you brought Liz back, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. Well, anyway, I wanted to tell you I finished making those cuts in the script. You wanta read it? I mean when you’re able to get up?”

“Yeah.”

Buddy reached out his hand to his son.

“Help me the fuck up. I need a beer.”

****

“Philip, this is really good.”

"No, really?”

“Really. The cuts are good, and -- you’ve made some other changes, I see.”

“Yeah, you don’t mind?”

“No, not at all. Tell you what, I’m gonna make some notes on this script, and I want you to give it another go. Try to incorporate my notes, but if you have any other bright ideas, feel free.”

“I did actually, but I was afraid to, you know -- like that one part right around -- where, here, page what, twenty-seven...”

“Yeah, that’s the act break.”

“Act break.”

“Yeah. Don’t worry about it now, but all these scripts have a three-act formula.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I’ll tell you all about it some other time, but look, don’t tell me your ideas now, just write them in and then we’ll talk it over.”

“So I did good.”

“You did really good.”

“So I still get like a hundred a day?”

“If you do the work, yeah.”

“Right on,” said Philip. “Hey, by the way, what’s this about you and this Debbie woman?”

(Continued here, and at least until a plot develops. Please look to the right hand column of this page for an up-to-date listing of links to all other available chapters of Uncle Buddy’s House™, soon to be a major motion picture starring W.C. Fields as Buddy, Linda Darnell as Deirdre, and “Buster” Crabbe as Philip; a Charles Bogle Production.)

“Railroad Train to Heaven”, Part 166: mysteries

The lobby of the Chalfonte Hotel, circa 1963

Let us rejoin our intrepid memoirist Arnold Schnabel and his inebriated and deific friend “Josh”, as they ascend the wooden steps to the stately Chalfonte Hotel, in the only slightly shopworn resort of Cape May, NJ, late on a Saturday night in August in that faraway land called 1963...

(Please click here to go to the previous chapter of this Gold View Award™-winning multi-volume masterpiece. Newcomers, or those old-timers who wish to re-live the good times, may go here for the very first chapter.)

We walked across the porch, or Josh walked, I limped, Josh pulled open the screen door and we entered the lobby.

No one was about, no one at the desk, but we could hear some faint voices down to the left of the hall, from the King Edward Room, although we couldn’t see into it from here.

In the light of the lobby I got a good look at Josh as he turned and headed toward the lounge.

“Hey, Josh, wait up a minute.”

“What’s up? Come on, we’ll miss last call.”

“Josh, wait, look at us.”

There was a full-length pier-glass on the front wall. I gently pulled Josh over to it, and I stood there next to him.

There was he, with tar-black stains on the knees of his khakis and the elbows of his wrinkled Oxford shirt. And there also was I, both bare knees scraped, and with a trail of dirty-looking blood painted down one of my shins and into my sockless Keds. I watched myself as I raised the underside of my right arm so Josh could see the long bloody scrape there, and then I held out my left hand with its own scrape and purple bruise.

“Okay,” said Josh, looking at us, and smiling. “I know I look bad, but you look terrible, Arnold.”

“I know,” I said, and I turned to face the real him and not his image. “We can’t walk in there looking like this, Josh. They’ll throw us out.”

“Well, you they would throw out, definitely. I suppose those scrapes hurt, don’t they?”

“Uh, yes, a little.”

“Well, twice in one night with you, then. Here we go.”

He made to crouch in front of me, but I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up.

“Josh, not in here.”

“Oh, right, I guess it would look a little suspicious to anyone just strolling in. Well, okay then, let’s just find a more private spot.” He looked around, taking out his cigarettes. “Oh, I know, the dining room, the so-called, what, Magnolia Room -- come on.”

A mere dozen or so quick strides and limps, and we were in the dining room; the electric lights were all turned off, but the white tablecloths glowed and the upturned glasses and the silverware sparkled and gleamed in the pale light spilling in through the tall windows from the street lamps outside on Sewell Street.

Josh pulled a chair out from the nearest table, turned it around and sat down. He popped a cigarette up from the pack in his hand, and, after he’d lit it, he said, “All right, let’s try this again. Stand in front of me.”

I did so.

“Let’s do the knees first,” he said.

Putting his cigarette in his mouth he laid his hands with outstretched fingers lightly on my knees.

After ten or fifteen seconds he pulled his hands back, took the cigarette out of his mouth and said, “That’s funny, the scrapes should be disappearing.”

I bent forward and looked down in the dimness. The scrapes were still there all right.

“Does it still hurt?” he asked.

“Well --”

“Be frank now.”

“Yeah, it still hurts,” I said.

“Hmmm. Okay. Let’s give it another shot.”

First he reached around behind him and grabbed an ashtray, brought it to the edge of the table and put his cigarette in it. Turning forward, he took a breath, then rubbed the palms of his hands together rapidly for half a minute or so. Then, quickly, he put his hands out again and laid them my knees, but much more firmly this time.

“Ouch,” I said.

“Sorry,” he said. “Just bear with me here. Do you feel anything?”

“Yes,” I said. “Pain.”

“Nothing like an energy wave -- you know -- the life force, that sort of thing?”

“Well, maybe a little. But mostly just pain.”

“Okay. Hold still just a little longer.”

I waited. I really wanted a cigarette now. And God only knew what would happen if someone walked by the dining room and took a look inside. But then I thought, Wait, Josh is the son of God. Which means he more or less is God, since God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost -- or Spirit rather -- were one God indivisible, or at least so I had been taught, although I won’t pretend to say that I had ever even begun to understand the ins and outs of this odd doctrine. So, what I should do, I should just do what the priests always told us to do, and leave myself in his -- or His -- hands. But I doubt if the priests ever meant that phrase so literally.

Finally Josh pulled his hands away.

“Hmmm,” he said. “This is really bizarre. Scrapes still there. Does it still hurt?”

“Well, it’s a little better,” I said.

And it might have been a very little better. But not very much better.

He reached over to the table, got a napkin, and wiped his hands, which had got my blood and dirt on them.

“Well, there you go,” he said. He took his cigarette out of the ashtray. “Not only am I not omniscient, but I’m obviously not so very all powerful, either.”

He took a drag of his cigarette.

“You’re tired,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Probably bringing Mr. Arbuthnot back from the dead took a lot out of you.”

“You know, Arnold, you’re probably right. That on top of all the bourbon I drank.”

“And the reefer, too, maybe,” I ventured.

“No, I don’t think it’s the reefer,” he said. “If anything the reefer should help when it comes to miracles.”

“Well, anyway, it’s okay,” I said. “These scrapes will heal. They’re nothing serious. God knows I’ve fallen in the street loads of times before, and I’m still here to talk about it.”

“Yeah, true. Oh well --”

He heaved himself up from the chair, looked around. There was a small white vase in the center of the table with a stem of pink-hued gladiolus in it; Josh picked up the vase, spilled some water out of it onto the napkin he had just wiped his hands with, then he handed me the napkin.

“Here you go, Arnold, just get the blood off with this. I gather you’d be more comfortable doing it yourself.”

“That’s true,” I said. “Thank you.”

I gingerly wiped off my knees, my calf, my arm, my hand.

“Great, looks worlds better,” said Josh.

Now I didn’t know what to do with the napkin.

“Okay, let’s get that drink now,” he said. “And a sandwich for you. Or pie.”

We went back out into the lobby. I was still carrying the blood-stained napkin, and Josh noticed this.

“Here, give me that.”

I gave it to him, he took it between his thumb and index finger, looked around again, then went over to the reception desk. I was afraid he was going to stick it in a drawer or something, but he found a waste-paper basket behind it and dropped it into that.

“It’ll be one of life’s little mysteries for the desk clerk tomorrow,” he said. “Okay, let’s go.”

(Continued here, because we must. Kindly look to the right hand column of this page to find what quite often is an up-to-date listing of links to all other faithfully transcribed chapters of Arnold Schnabel’s Railroad Train To Heaven©, soon to be a major motion picture starring Jeremy Irons as Arnold and Brad Pitt as “Josh”; a J. Arthur Rank Production, written and directed by Larry Winchester.)

“Uncle Buddy’s House”, Chapter 16: home

Let us rejoin our raffish hero Buddy Best, as he brings his troubled daughter Liz back from rainy and cold Milwaukee to sunny Los Angeles...

(Click here to go our previous chapter, or here to go to the beginning of our Hollywood soap opera. Based on an untrue story.)

When they got into LAX Debbie Greenberg was waiting for them.

“Debbie, baby, what are you doing here?”

“What’s it look like I’m doing, I’m picking you guys up.”

“Oh, thanks, but -- “

Debbie turned to Liz.

“How are you, sweety?”

“I’m -- tired.”

Liz had slept about twelve hours the night before, and she’d slept in the cab to the airport. She’d fallen asleep again in the Milwaukee airport and she’d slept through the flight. Buddy had hardly talked to her at all. Last night she’d been drunk and incoherent, and today she had been hungover and untalkative or asleep.

“Are you guys hungry?”

Yeah, Buddy was hungry; he’d only had peanuts on the plane (and not a single goddam drink, even during his customary over-the-Rockies panic attack), but he waited for Liz, and anyway the question was really directed at Liz.

“I -- yeah, I am, Debbie.”

“Good, what do you want to eat, sweetheart?”

“I want -- a Pink’s hotdog?”

“No, you’ve got to have something nutritious, Liz. Look at you, you’re a twig.”

“No I’m not --”

“Look, don’t start. Now what do you want to eat?”

“Can I have -- a hot pastrami?”

“Sure you can, baby. All right, let’s blow this dump.”

Despite the fucked-up circumstances Buddy felt full of the joy of being safely alive back on the ground and, yes, back in L.A. Despite all its ugliness and tackiness this town was his home...

And in the car Liz fell promptly asleep again, curled up in the back seat.

“What do you think, Deb, should we just take her home?”

“Nah, let’s get some food in her.”

They were driving in Debbie’s vintage 1960-something Chevy convertible, Debbie cruising along through the rush-hour traffic like a gangster’s moll with a kerchief on her head and her sunglasses on and a cigarette in her hand.

“Y’know, Deb, you really didn’t have to --”

“Oh, shut up, Buddy. Marlene wanted to come but I had work for her to do at the office.”

“Oh, that was nice of her --”

“She’s hot for you.”

“Aren’t all women?”

“Hey, you’re a free man now, Best. Watch the babes come crawling out of the woodwork.”

“Yeah, I’ll have to stop at the drug store and pick up some chick repellant.”

But then maybe Debbie had a point there. Like what about that woman in the bar last night, who had given him her lawyer-card, which admittedly he had thrown away, but still -- and what about Marlene? She was fine looking --

“You’re thinking about Marlene, aren’t you, Best?”

“No, no, not at all, uh, just thinking about where we should go to, uh, eat --”

“Yeah, sure.”

“No, really --”

“Okay, how about Canter’s?”

“Canter’s is cool,” said Buddy.

They talked business for a bit, and now Buddy was looking at Debbie. Okay, how old was Debbie? Late thirties? Forty? He sure wasn’t going to ask. But she did have a bod, another one of these workout queens -- and what was up with this skirt action? Her skirt was really short. And tight. As her foot worked the brake and the accelerator you could see the muscles moving in her thigh and calf. And she was wearing this sleeveless top that showed off her shoulders and her arms. And her breasts. Okay, were they real? Not that Buddy gave too much of a damn if they were or not.

****

While Debbie got Liz into bed in her old room -- she’d fallen asleep again on the way back from Canter’s -- Buddy sat in the kitchen with a bourbon on the rocks and made some phone calls. Philip and Deirdre were both out. Buddy finished his calls and sat there at the kitchen table. Debbie came in.

“She had a little crying jag, but she’s asleep now,” she said.

“Cool.” There was a wet blotch on Debbie’s top, over her right breast; it must have been from Liz’s tears. “You want a drink, Deb?”

“Yeah, I could use one now, thanks.”

Debbie wanted wine, so Buddy opened up a bottle of Montrachet for her and they took their drinks out back. They sat in the deck chairs with the sun going down behind them on the other side of the house, and they stared at the pool, which had now assumed a marbled greenish-brown color under its coating of leaves and twigs and dead bugs. It gave off a slightly swampy odor, mingled with the smell of the eucalyptus and of the overripe garden.

"So Buddy," said Debbie, "are you trying to grow something in this pool, like a science project? And what’s with the garden over there? You gonna shoot a miniature Tarzan movie?”

“That’s an idea.”

"And are you aware that your lovely old home looks like a frat house on a Sunday morning? Don't you have a cleaning woman?"

“Joan wouldn’t have one. It was this weird midwestern thing with her --”

Say what you want about Joan, and you could say a lot, but she was a clean-freak, an orderly-freak, a lawncare-and-gardening freak. She’d come home from a full day of shooting action scenes and then clean the oven or vacuum the fucking curtains --

“Joan is gone, Buddy. Your place is a pigsty. So hire a fucking cleaning woman. Hire a pool service and a part-time gardener.”

“Sounds expensive.”

“More expensive than Joan?”

“You got a point there.”

“I can help you with this stuff if you want me to.”

“No, I’ll get on it.”

“Did you talk to your doctor?”

“Yeah. He said just to let her sleep, and we have an appointment with him tomorrow at one.”

“You’re supposed to meet with the Sony people tomorrow at one.”

“Oh. Right.”

“I can take her if you want.”

“To the doctor’s?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Well -- no reason I guess.”

“I’m your business manager, Mr. Best.”

“Yeah. But this isn’t exactly business.”

“If it affects you it affects the business, so it is business. So what’s up with Liz? She started on the pills again, right?”

“I don’t know. I think she was just drinking this time.”

“Drinking? I thought her thing was diet pills.”

“Yeah, it was. But this guy she was with, she met him at AA, he was more of an alcy, so, from what little I could drag out of her, I gather he started drinking again, and she started drinking too, so --”

“Why did she go to AA if her problem was pills?”

“She doesn’t like NA. She says it’s always crack heads and heroin addicts and she can’t relate. She likes the alcoholics better.”

“Maybe too much.”

“Yeah, right.”

They sat and looked at the dirty water in the pool.

“So, what’s up with you, Deb? You still going out with, uh, what’s his name -- Jerry? No -- Harry?”

“Close. Larry. And no. Not for, what, a year now?”

“Oh. You going out with anybody else?”

“Are you asking me for a date?”

Buddy didn’t say anything. But a lot was going unsaid all of a sudden.

She reached over and touched his thigh.

Debbie would probably be great in bed. But then there was the problem of what would happen out of bed. And more immediately there was the problem that what he most wanted to do right now was to rent a trashy DVD, smoke half a joint and drink beer and watch the DVD, and then go the fuck to bed, alone, and sleep. Or maybe he should take a swim first, in the dirty water...

Deirdre’s voice rang out from inside the house, saying Hello she was home.

“Oh well,” said Buddy.

“Darn kids,” said Debbie. “Let’s go in, I haven’t seen Deirdre in ages.”

“You go ahead, I’m going to sit here a minute.”

He wanted to wait till his erection went away.

****

As he stood with Debbie out by her car he said, “Look, I’d better take Liz to the doctor myself tomorrow.”

“Okay, but --”

“No, look, you go to the meeting with Harvey and Iggy. Cover for me. This is more important.”

“You’re a good egg, Best.”

“Yeah, well --”

“Gimme a kiss.” And she lifted her face up.

Buddy gave her a little kiss and she wanted more.

“That wasn’t much of a kiss, asshole.”

“I’ve got a lot on my mind, Debbie.”

“Right. I’m being a fucking cunt.” She smiled. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Right,” said Buddy.

(Do we see romance in Buddy’s future? Should he perhaps keep it in his pants for just a little while? Continued here. Please turn to the right hand column of this page for a conceivably up-to-date listing of links to all other available chapters of Uncle Buddy’s House™, soon to be a major motion picture starring Humphrey Bogart as Buddy and Ava Gardner as Debbie. A Larry Winchester Production.)