Читать книгу For a Good Time Call... - Donald Ph.D. Ladew - Страница 4

Chapter 1

William sat at the bus stop near the corner of Victory and Hollywood Way, and as usual he was depressed. It wasn’t because the bus was fifteen minutes late, which it was: It wasn’t because the molded plastic roof, recently punctured by vandals, was drooling acid rain down his neck. And it wasn't because the pretty redhead waiting for the bus didn't notice him.

It was because he was five foot four and three-eighths inches tall. That might not mean anything to you or me, but it did to William. When you live your life looking at the navel of the world, three-eighths is important.

Deep depression: He was reduced to reading the ads on the walls of the enclosure. Maybe I'm coming up to boredom, he thought. That would be good.

When William was a little boy, he didn't know he was short. He was happy-go-lucky; he thought he could do anything. Then in his teens he discovered short, and life got mean, and mysterious: It was mysterious because he didn’t understand why things that shouldn’t matter, mattered.

Even the ads on the plastic walls of the bus stop were a mystery, what little he could decipher beneath the spray-paint swastikas, names of local juvenile gangs, and illiterate obscenities.

Someone had taken a serious dislike to Arnoldo. The roof blared triumphantly in international orange, “Arnoldo is a Frut”' And in Day-Glo red, “Arnoldo eets Manoor.” Then the final, crushing blow, “Arnoldo has a Tinny Dik.” Somewhere a crazed Puerto Rican was plotting vengeance on these defilers of his macho soul.

Back to the ads. He yawned. The one next to him was a puzzle. It was a picture of a girl, sixteen or so, draped negligently over the steering wheel of a 1940 Ford pickup. She wore a nondescript shirt, half in and half out of wrinkled jeans. Her straight blond hair was cut short and hung over her eyes: lipstick an afterthought. She had no discernible figure at all.

William didn't get it. Her expression was indecipherable. Maybe it was sullen, or disappointed, or maybe too much stuffed cabbage. Hard to tell. Down near the bottom of the panel it appeared to say, `agel Boy Jens. Cryptic! Maybe it said something else, but some whimsical spray-can artiste had neatly lettered, “Elephants Need Love” across the Bagel Boys in pale-green, luminescent paint.

Then he got it; it said, “Bugle Boy Jeans”. He spent a few pointless minutes wondering if there were men anywhere who could lust after this drab, washed out boy masquerading as a girl.

As he continued to Look at these spirited examples of sub-human creativity, he noticed something out of place. On the panel behind the bench, near the very bottom, in perfect copperplate script —gold on black—was a peculiar notice.

For a Good Time, Call...

Cicelle Annie-Brown 347-4140

If I am Far Away

Leave Name and Number

William stared at it in bemused silence for a minute or more. It was so legible, neat, even business-like. For some reason it cheered him up. Then he dozed off, which he was doing when the bus arrived, late as usual, maliciously splashing oily water on his feet. William hardly noticed. He was still intrigued by the strange message.

He lived near a park: No, not the nice one. Looking down from the window of his fifth floor walk-up, down through the chemically defoliated trees, he saw an old derelict sprawled in front of a bench. He must have just fallen off. His hands clutched the earth desperately, as though his world was trying to cast him into space.

Further out into the badlands, near the center of the park, a gang of Puerto Rican toughs in shiny leather pants, tank tops, and cabalistic tattoos, swaggered for an unseen audience. They were like the buses, trains, the under passes and buildings, their bodies covered with graffiti.

Home, he'd heard, is where the heart is. So where does that leave me? he thought. An alien from Arcturus? He was the unwilling effect of life.

He had read about great men who were short, but they always seemed to end their lives slaughtering hordes of harmless people, then getting killed themselves. He left that crap behind when he left the bloody jungles of Viet Nam. He was too good at it, besides it made him crazy.

Then, back in the world, he lost the way. He didn't know how to get there from here, wherever here was, or there. William had his Waterloo in the school yard at Porterfield Jr. High School when he was ten. Somehow he pissed off Pug Swann, the local bully-in-residence, and there, in front of his friends, he got whipped in a battle he desperately wanted to win. It didn't matter that when he finished UDT (Underwater Demolition Training) he could have dismembered the miserable shit, that day in the schoolyard was the moment he knew he was short.

Why, in the cheerless gloom of that shabby flat, he thought of that bizarre advertisement he didn't know. Stranger yet, what made him call. He dialed the number in a haze of boredom and discontent. He wasn't there, he didn't know who called. It sure as hell couldn't have been him!

After two rings, she picked up the phone. "Cicelle, speaking." She pronounced it, Seesell, a beautiful coloratura voice with an odd accent—maybe French, or South American.

"I...I saw your sign. I...don't...what does it mean?" he blurted out all in a rush.

"May I know your nomenclature?" she asked.

"Huh?" The Oscar Wilde of Bonefish Park strikes again. His wit is legend.

"Nomenclature, nuncupation, appellation, cognomen, namesake, patronymic, handle, name..." She sounded as if she was reading Roget's Thesaurus.

"Oh, you want to know my name? It's William Holt-Fennimore, with a hyphen, ma'am."

"Your pardon, William Holt-Fennimore with a hyphen, I've only had the tapes for a few days. I'll call you William, if I may. It's euphonic, it sings well throughout the frequency band."

"Uh...sure, Miss Annie-Brown," he stuttered. He hadn't a clue, but her voice was exactly like every fantasy he'd ever imagined.

"William, my ad means what it says. It is my profession to provide a good time. It is my goal for the next ten life cycles."

"Huh?" God, he moaned, if I could just wrench my foot out of my mouth maybe I could think of something intelligent to say.

"Did I not say that correctly, William? Oh, no matter. Would you like to make an appointment?" she asked.

What am I doing? he thought. She sure doesn't sound like the hookers patrolling the park.

"Okay." He felt as if he was agreeing to radical surgery with a one percent chance of survival.

"Good program. Come to the Bellefourche Towers, Suite 1201A at six before sun's end tomorrow, n'est pas?"

The line went dead before he could say yes or no. I must be losing it, he thought. I'm going for the truly bizarre. Forget it, Will Fennimore, he muttered, you may be depressed, but you're not a damned fool.

William didn't have many options, or thought he didn't. What the hell, I was crazy to call in the first place, he thought. He finally went to sleep on the couch, listening to the world drizzle on his window.