“Good old Turk,” I said.
“Mr. C’s never met Turk,” Jamie said.
“And I’m the poorer for it, no doubt,” I said.
“Turk sounds sort of cool, actually,”
Kylie said, relishing the effect her words would have on me.
“Oh, yes, very cool,” I said.
“As opposed to short, mouthy guys who aren’t cool.”
Jamie giggled. “I think she’s talking about you, Mr. C.”
At which point a horn sounded.
“Turk!” Jamie said. “He’s picking me up for lunch!”
“I hope he’s got clothes on,” Kylie laughed.
“She’d make you a great girlfriend,” Jamie said of Kylie. “I mean, if you weren’t all hung up on that snob Pam Forrest. And if Kylie wasn’t married.”
“You have a succinct way of stating a problem,”
Kylie said.
“I don’t know what succinct means but it sounds sort of dirty.”
The horn again.
“He’ll have to come in sometime so I can meet him,” I said.
“He doesn’t like lawyers.”
“Oh? How come?”
“That time he ran over that nun? This lawyer his dad got really didn’t have any respect for Turk. I mean, the nun wasn’t even hurt much. It wasn’t his fault she was so short. He just couldn’t see her behind the dump truck he was backing up.”
“Turk’s father owns a construction company,” I explained to Kylie.
“Ah,” Kylie said.
“I mean, she sprained her ankle was all,”
Jamie said. “It wasn’t like she died or anything.”
The horn. For the third time.
“He isn’t real patient sometimes,” Jamie explained. Then, “Gee, I’ve got a lot of other stories about stuff me’n Turk did, Kylie. We’ll have to get together again sometime.”
“You know,” Kylie said, sounding sincere.
“I’d actually like that.”
Jamie was wearing a pair of jeans so tight they should be illegal. Unfair to lechers like me.
Kylie sat down in the client chair. “She really made me feel better. She’s not a genius but there’s an innocence and an energy that’s really great to be around.”
“Great. So you’re feeling better.”
“Much better, actually. I can’t believe it.”
And then her body sort of collapsed in on itself and she started sobbing. “I’ve been up and down like this ever since he told me about his affair,” she managed to say.
I didn’t have any Kleenex so I went into the can and got several fistfuls of toilet paper.
She said, when she’d gathered herself,
“I should leave him, shouldn’t I?”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, no, what?”
“No advice. You give people advice on matters of the heart, you lose them as friends forever.”
“But I’m asking for advice. That absolves you of all responsibility.”
“You say that now-but later…”
“C’mon, McCain. You really think I should leave him, don’t you?”
I took her hand in mine and gently said, “You know what I really think?”
“What?”
“That we should go get some lunch.”
She jerked her hand away. “Coward.”
“Damn right I’m a coward. I have three fewer friends today because I advised them on their affairs of the heart. They won’t speak to me.
Now, let’s go.”
The wading pool in the town square was packed with tots. You could hear them squealing, summer music on a summer breeze. There was a drowsy, siesta feeling such as you always read about in the western novels of Mr. Max Brand, for whom I’d formed a real affection. I’d read two of his when I was twelve and then kept on reading. His heroes were always brooders and mourners and failures and daydreamers and that lent his stories a uniqueness and depth most westerns just don’t have, John Wayne forgive me. He was especially great at describing Mexico. And that, at least in my imagination, was how our little town felt at this noontime. Some dusty Mexican pueblo where this really neat-looking short guy rides in on a white horse and all the se@noritas come running. It was so hot here today tires were losing tread simply by revolving against the steamy pavement.
Kylie spotted them before I did. On the windshield of a pink-and-white Nash rambler. And on the windshield of a nice new Pontiac convertible. And on the window of a Dairy Queen panel truck.
Flyers.
She snatched one up. Glanced at it.
Flicked it in my face.
Why The Jews Want Jfk
To Win!
The Zionist Powers Behind The
Kennedys!
The rest you can imagine for yourself.
“But didn’t old man Kennedy hang around with Hitler?” she asked.
“Liked the man very much. Considered him a friend.
That’s one of the reasons the Kennedys have to keep old Joe out of sight. A lot of people still resent the old bastard.”
“Then why do they think the Jews are behind Kennedy?”
“I guess I don’t know,” I said.
“Maybe for the same reasons the Jews are stashing all their guns in church basements.”
“These people are nuts!” she said with great authority. “As my folks always pointed out.”
Her folks were (a) university professors and (but) Jewish, in a time when it was not universally fashionable to be either. Kylie’d grown up in Madison, Wisconsin, one of the most lovely and exciting cities in the U.S.
“Well, they get to economize on this election, anyway,” I said.
We started walking again. She started fanning herself with her fingers. She had wonderful long fingers. Artistic, I guess you’d say. She also had a very artistic ass.
“How are they economizing?”
“Well, when the Klan and the other crazies get all riled up around election time, they usually take the Jews and the Catholics on separately. But since Kennedy has a lot of Jewish advisers, they’ve decided they can save on their printing bills by doubling up. The only thing they didn’t get to is the
Eleanor-Roosevelt-is-a-lesbo-thing.”
“Eleanor Roosevelt is a lesbian?”
“That’s what all the pamphlets say. Say, I wonder if Kenny Thibodeau has heard that one. There’s a political novel in it for him.
Lesbo Legislators.”
She laughed. “He’s actually an interesting guy.”
“Yeah, he is.”
“He goes away to all these big cities and comes back and tells us what’s going on. You know, trends and stuff. I even read a couple of his novels.”
