open. The view was of the woods and goat corral. A wood stove provided heat; its big black box crinkled and tinked, and the air above it danced. The tiny color television was on; Moe was listening to Dr. Mortimer Adler discussing ethics. Another of Moe's aphorisms is that the amount of contentment and happiness you get out of life is directly and inversely proportional to the amount of time you spend worrying about yourself or trying to make yourself happy. Seek happiness, he says, and you'll never find it. Seek the welfare and happiness of others and you'll have more happiness than you'll know what to do with.
He is probably right about this. I say he's probably right because I have never known him to be wrong about anything. I suppose the idea is rather akin to that of Zen. Happiness, says Zen, is not seeking or expecting it. So these Zen Buddhist monks sit around in orange robes and shaved heads, keeping terrible hours and a starvation diet, whopping each other with bamboo stakes. Hey, c'mon and get happy…
'Wanna play?' Moe growled, hauling out the chessboard from beneath a photograph. The photograph was taken in 1967 and shows Moe with his then wife, standing in front of their big house in Lexington. A Mercedes and a Jag are visible in the picture off to one side. Moe is clean-shaven besuited, and trying his best to hide his strained smile. This is Moe Abramson in his former life- Moe
the Big-shot Psychiatrist. The material success was supposed to make him happy but it didn't. Underneath this portrait was another clipped-out headline: WHY IS THIS MAN SMILING?
Moe and his wife split and he underwent a startling metamorphosis, a reincarnation of the personalities in part of Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Thoreau, St. Francis, and Florence Nightin gale. The only trouble with Moe is that he's the world's biggest soft touch. Moe's such a sap he'd buy tickets to the Arsonist's Ball, bless his heart.
As he set up the wooden pieces I heard a soft patter of feet behind me and turned to see Moe's friend. Her long hair flowed over her shoulders and almost covered her breasts. But not quite.
As for her bottom half, it remained in full view as she swung into the room, making no attempt to cover herself.
'Doc, this is Loretta Popp. Lolly, this is my friend Doc. Lolly honey, I think you better put something on, okay?'
She stopped, dumfounded, as if the thought hadn't occurred and there was no need for it.
'Oh yeah… sorry, Moe, it's just that I'm used to… you know…',
'I understand. You go put something on now.'
She turned and sashayed out of the room, swinging a luscious tail section and gorgeous legs. My knees quivered and I had the cold sweats. Soon the fantods would set in.
'What was that?'
'Mmmm. One of my charity cases. Lolly's been hooking these past two years. Started when she was sixteen, can you imagine?'
'Lolly Popp? Lolly Popp, for Chrissake?'
'Loretta. Then they nicknamed her Lolly. It was her, uh, nom de guerre. It seems to have stuck.'
'Well she certainly is tasty-looking. She part black?'
'Half Jamaican, which explains the tawny skin and aqua eyes. She looks great now- a beautiful girl. But seven months ago she was a sick kid: hepatitis and V.D. Got her all squared away now. She's en route to a foster home.'
'But I'm not going,' said the lovely creature as she glided back into the room. She curled up on the sofa next to Moe and ran her fingers through his thinning hair. Then she pouted and let her head fall against his. She was wearing a big floppy Celtics sweat shirt. It became her. But then, an ox yoke would become her. She could glorify a slag pit. Moe rubbed her back. Then I saw his hand fall down behind her. Almost instantly he withdrew it, clucking his tongue like a scolding mother hen.
'Loretta. Loretta dear, I said get dressed?
She rose, still pouting, and began to return to the old trailer portion of Moe's dwelling. As she walked past, the sweat shirt rode up a bit and I saw the cause of Moe's rebuke. It seemed that lovely Loretta had neglected to put on pants. She turned and paused, and a faint smile of apology played about her full lips.
'Sorry, Moe. I'm just used to… you know…'
'Of course,' said Moe, watching her disappear.
'Kiljoy,' I said.
'So what's wit' you? You've just moved your bishop like a knight.'
Lolly came back in a flash. In the truest sense, since she was still bottomless. But old Lolly Popp had a sense of humor all right. I have to hand it to her. She scowled at Moe, one hand on hip, and held a pair of black underpants up, as if for inspection, in her other hand. That is, I think they were black. So much light was coming through them it was hard to tell. I wouldn't exactly call them flimsy, but if she held them at shoulder height and dropped them, they'd take five minutes to reach the floor. 'An extremely gratifying choice of undergarments, Lolly,' I said. 'Bravo.'
She smiled at me-my God, she was gorgeous!-and dutifully held the panties out in a little rectangle and stepped into them, pulling them up. Then I discovered that a girl looks just as sexy squiggling into a pair of slinky panties as she does wriggling out of them. Why is that? And also, though you'd eventually tire of viewing the Taj Mahal by moonlight, or the sunset over Morro Bay, a beautiful woman slipping in or out of her drawers is a sight that never ceases to enthrall. Why is that?
Lolly Popp smiled at me and then gave an exaggerated blush, realizing that I was watching her pivot back and forth as she drew up the lacy pants. Gee, they were snug. She grinned, turning around.
'Here's the good part,' said Moe intensely.
'You're not kidding,' I answered as I stared at the sumptuous globes of tan flesh that jounced and jiggled as they fought their way into the slinky nyloncasing. Lolly made a final adjustment, then smoothed out the fabric- if one could call it that- with her hands. The pants were nearly transparent except for a tiny if pie-shaped wedge of darker material at the crotch. Perhaps this was for reinforcement, but I know better. Like the seams in nylons, it was designed by some kinky frog in Paris at the turn of the century to make the wearer yet more seductive. Bless him (or her), whoever he was. He should be canonized.
'Ah, this is terrific!' said Moe. Then I realized that he wasn't referring to his friend; he was engrossed in Dr. Mortimer Adler. He leaned over and turned up the volume. The good doctor said: '… and so by the term goodness, we could be referring to the classic Judeo-Christian concept of purity… or perhaps in a more modern sense the Sartrian view, so well expressed by Gabriel Marcel, of goodness as a behavior template- an active as opposed to passive concept, if you will- which leads to the individuals own responsibility to immerse himself in the upward march of humanity.. .'
Lolly stared at the tube and sighed. She turned to me.
'Moe's so smart, isn't he? Isn't he terrific?'
'Yes he is.'
She sank silently onto the couch between us. Our sides were touching. Above the dark wedge of material on the front of her pants the top of her bush peeked out through the thin material. It looked cute. They tend to.
'Pay attention, Doc; here's the essence of life,' said Moe, leaning forward. 'The real essence?
'I know,' I said, staring at Lolly's sport section. My head refused to budge. Hydraulic levers couldn't move it. I heard Mortimer Adler continue: 'And so we ask- literally for goodness' sake- what we each can do, every day, to contribute to the general welfare. Now this daily game plan, mundane as it may seem- a sort of Boy Scout ethos, if you will- remains a salutary mode of living. lt is reflected in the New Testament…'
Lolly sighed again and shifted her bottom. She leaned over, and in a cloud of delicious scent whispered to me.
'I'm finally able to show Moe how grateful I am. Do you know he's paying for my junior college?'
'A wonderful guy…' ·
'I don't have any home now but this; I hope he'll let me stay.'
I was about to offer her alternative residence, but some vague voice in the old gray matter told me it was unwise.
'Loretta, dear, those pants are inappropriate. Why don't you put your gym shorts on over them, okay?'
She stalked off toward the bedroom, giving me a last fleeting glimpse. I could've killed Moe.
'What kind of cockamamy chess game is dis?' He scowled. 'Your king gand queen are switched and you just moved your pawn like a rook!'
