It was Monday, a sleeting Monday. No, wait a minute, it might of been a Friday. Yeah, Friday, a sizzling Friday. It was`a scorcher; people were spontaneously combusting all over town. No, shit--that was Wednesday. It was Tuesday. Yeah, Tuesday, a blank Tuesday. I'd logged in a night of bill dipping at the local watering hole. I had a fin riding on the Redskins to take the Cowboys, but the spread was too thin so I was pickling my gizzard while the redmen fumbled away my fin with flopping around on the field like a pack of primates trying to pork a pigskin.
It was only a fin and it was Monday so I shoulda left after the game and caught up on some sleep like a good little boy, but there was a dame at the end of the bar throwing down shots of Chivas like a steamshovel, and I had the feeling she might be the type who likes a good detective story––without the plot, if you get my drift. So now it was Tuesday and I'd had to sell my Elvis on velvet painting to pay my bar bill. I had a new gap in my dental work and a flock of woodpeckers inside my skull beakin' on my brain like it was a gourmet grub. I was at my desk with half the days of the week printed on my face from my desk calender and I was holding the stub of a raw weiner in one hand and a cigarette filter in the other when the earthquake started and the day turned to night.
Turned out to be a black bodyguard with stylish shoes walking across my office and shaking me by my shoulder.
"You Sam Simile?" he said.
I had to think for a moment. I gave the happy birthday song a quick mental humming and nodded. The movement sent the woodpeckers in my head into the spin cycle at the Speed Queen birdbath in my brain. There was a big flock of 'em in there. My brain felt like a stale stump of swiss cheese.
"What if I am?" I quipped
"If you are, I mean if you is, youse about to meet my boss."
"Mmmmpph," I said. The woodpeckers had sucked all the water off my tongue.
He got down on his knees and put his face next to mine. He was a large man; I could tell by his size.
"Lay one hand on her and I'll break your neck," he said.
"Oh yeah?" I said, raising my head up off my desk calender.
"Yeah," he said and strode out of my office. The peckers were chorusing with his footsteps. I watched him walk out my window and down my fire escape.
Break my neck. That was a laugh, I thought to myself. He'd be lucky to cause massive internal hemorrhaging and vertebrae stress fractures by the look of him.
I wheeled myself away from my desk and put a pot of joe on my gas camp cookstove. The power company had cut my juice last month for nonpayment, but I was doing just fine without 'em.
I turned on the gas and was looking for a match when she walked in.
I could see right away why her bodyguard had threatened to squeeze my spine. This babe was built like a brick greenhouse; solid class and no glass. She had a pair of feet that never saw the sun and a set of stems that mighta made Michelangelo paint porno. She was wearing a low–cut sweater that was landscaped like a wool zepplin net and a skirt that musta been manufactured by midgets.
She sat down and took out an ivory cigarette holder, fitted one of those expensive French fags in the end of it and looked at me.
She had eyes like weeping puppies.
I lit a match and the woodpeckers in my head all exploded!
When I came to, she was bending over me with a concerned look on her face. The explosion had killed all the woodpeckers except one, but he was a big one. More like a woodpounder.
There was a hole in my ceiling about the size of my coffee pot, and I was lying on the floor. I rolled over and glanced down her sweater, but the landscape made me dizzy.
"Are you all right?" she said. She had the kind of lips that could scare a popsicle right off its stick.
"Just another day," I said, jumping to my feet and leaping onto my office chair to retrieve the coffee pot that was blown through my ceiling.
"How about some expresso?" I said, grabbing the pot and giving a pull so it made contact with the frayed wiring in the space above my ceiling.
I lit up like an eel biting a fusebox and went down for the count again.
This time when I came to the woodpeckers were gone but there was a kind of hum inside my head like an old Kelvinator door was open somewhere .
The little light was off.
I crawled into my chair and rifled through my bottom drawer for my bottle and poured a couple stiff ones. I handed her a glass.
"Top of the morning," I said, throwing down my Burger King star wars collectable tumbler in one gulp. The reefer door slammed shut inside my head and the little light fizzed out like a flashbulb. I smiled at her, showing her the space where my top right canine had been just last night, and wiped a few days of the week and some soot off my cheek. She was looking at me with that look people get at the zoo near the African anteater cage during mating season.
She took a sip of her drink, got a light off my coffee pot and inhaled deeply. Her massive mammaries expanded to the size of sea lions inside her sweater.
This woman would never drown.
I could see this dame needed impressing. I pulled open my drawer, poured myself another blast and grabbed the little b.b. puzzle with the picture of the naked broad with no nipples and expertly rolled both b.b.s to the noses of her knockers with a quick flick of my wrist.
I threw down my second snort and gave her a suave look. I could tell she was impressed. Her eyes were still at the zoo, but now they were in front of the monkey cage.
She took another drag off her fag. If this broad was on the face of my b.b. puzzle, it would have been a two man job.
