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Act l
The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease. This storm was going to be a doozey. I put my feet up on my desk and set my mind free like one of those flowers, the Wandering Jew. The irony didn’t escape me either, me being a catholic and all. I stared at the red brick wall, the one that was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.
She walked into my office like a centipede with 98 missing legs, and caught my eye quicker than one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.
Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two opposite sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master, and her eyes were limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any pH cleaner. I knew she was trouble.
When she looked back at me, my thoughts tumbled in my head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free. I struggled to keep my composure, but I knew it was no use. I was about to fall for her like a mob informant falls into the East River.
”Can I help you?” I asked. I know… it was inane. Whenever I’m tense, I mutter the first thing that comes to mind. Thankfully, it was after lunch, so I wasn’t subconsciously led to ‘Would you like that super-sized?’
”Maybe…” She spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it. Her raven hair glistened like nose hair after a sneeze.
After she spoke, a thunder clap broke the silence; an ominous sound, much like that of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in a play. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 5:00 p.m. instead of 5:30, and our conversation seemed as forced as the dialogue during the interview portion.
“Look, sister, I’m a busy guy…” I tried to sell her cool… with all the effectiveness of a little boat gently drifting across a pond, exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
“Oh?” Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center. She leaned against the desk, scooting her butt onto one corner as she crossed her legs, forcing my eyes to the pink flesh the way a rancher forces a calf into a chute before he pokes it with a Hot-Shot. “I have a message for you. Remember your buddy, Hackstraw?”
I wasn’t about to fall for this old ruse… “I have lots of buddies,” I scoffed. “And don’t call me Hackstraw, if you’d looked at the door when you came in, you’d know my name is Smithers. I know a guy named Hackstraw, though.” That ought to let her know she’s not dealing with a pinhead. I have a mind like a steel trap, and not one that has been left out so long it’s rusted shut, either.
Now, she looked as perplexed as a hacker who means to access P:thur.quim102.comaaa/ch@ung but actually gets P:thur.quimaaa/ch@ung by mistake. In her long fingers, she held a tapered white cylinder that looked as long as one of those cigarettes you might see Bette Davis or Joan Crawford smoking, only without the holder. Her artistic sense was obviously exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.
She had a voice so husky it could have pulled a dogsled, and a deep, throaty, genuine laugh-- like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
She reached into her bag and pulled out a dagger, holding it up in front of her. A blind man could see it was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee(D-TX) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.
“I pulled this out of him when I found him laying behind my building. Hackstraw fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with alphabet soup.“ Her vocabulary was as bad as, like… well, like whatever, know what I mean?
She stood up and walked closer to me, looking very much like someone I had never seen before. I hadn’t noticed her height, but she was as tall as a five-foot-ten-inch tree. This woman was some package, all right… one of those that UPS leaves at your door that you don’t have to sign for.
Even then, I knew we were destined to be one; long separated by cruel fate, I envisioned us as star-crossed lovers racing across a grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Youngstown at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from South Bend at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
In my muddled state, the pistol she now brandished had gone unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can, but it was big enough to give me a bad case of barrel envy. She had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while. Was that lust in her eyes or was she simply crazy as one of those whack-os who gets locked up for killing a whole bunch of people? Her grin took on the dimensions of Tanya Harding watching re-runs of Nancy Kerrigan’s knee getting crushed.
We’d never met, but there we were… just like two hummingbirds who had also never met. Now, I was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, mind you, but a real duck that was actually lame… maybe from accidentally stepping on an extremely sharp pebble or a land mine or something.
Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do. "Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on Dollar-A-Beer Night. At that moment, I almost wished my name was Jason. Dropping the pistol, she wrapped her arms around me, a ballerina gracefully standing en pointe and extending one slender leg behind her like a dog at a fire hydrant.
Silently, for a moment we swayed like an oscillating electric fan set on medium. She was growing on me like E. coli on room-temperature ground round. It was becoming more and more apparent that she was as easy as a TV Guide crossword. When she sat down on my lap, I thought I heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
Sweet nothings wafted into my willing ears. Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band adjusted.
But, she wouldn’t make a sucker out of me. She was just a little too slick, a little too accomplished. For her, this was as much a tradition as a father chasing his kids around the back yard with a chainsaw… No, no! I wouldn’t be her patsy!
Suddenly, I was filled with revulsion as I looked at her and saw my ex-wife’s face. The revelation that our marriage of twenty years had disintegrated because of her infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall… I hate it when that happens.
What did this broad want?
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