3 A Brewski for the Old Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

“I’m just missing you,” hesitant and almost pained. “I guess that’s what’s worrying me. Man, when did I turn into such a wimp?”
    “Oh, you miss your sugar. You need a little candy, a little sweet, honey?” That’s when the safe-sex part started, although this was just a little too safe for my liking. I could’ve handled something a little more high risk than phone sex.
    When I went back to the den forty minutes later I found Marley and Lacey well into the bonding rituals of females on their own.
    “I kid you not,” Marley was telling Lacey, who was sitting cross-legged on the bed while Marley lounged across the bottom. “Tell her it’s true,” Marley ordered. “Tell her that everyone in your family is named after states or cities.”
    “Well, not everyone. But we have a few.” I flopped down in a butter yellow leather chair and held up my hand and started ticking off the names. “There’s Aunt Carolina, Aunt Virginia, Aunt Georgia and then Aunt Atlanta. I have an uncle named Dakota and one named Nevada.”
    Lacey put her hand over her mouth to hide her smile. “My family was so poor Grandma used a beat-up old atlas of the U.S. to name her eight children instead of a baby book. Or maybe she had wanderlust. I’m only sure she had an atlas and they were poor. Thank god she stopped having kids before she got to Poughkeepsie.”
    Lacey’s hand couldn’t quite hide her smile. “My dad is named Tulsa.”
    “But it worked,” Marley put in. “Your Aunt Virginia was well named, virgin by name and virgin by inclination. That woman is just too ugly and mean to ever find a man.”
    “And Aunt Georgia, she was well named,” I pointed out.
    “She’s sweet, a real peach.”
    “Yeah, fuzzy and round. I think her mustache may be her best feature. Hasn’t that woman ever heard of depilatories? Of course, she’d have to bathe in it.” Marley pointed a finger at me. “See where your genes are leading you?” Lacey snorted with laughter, spraying soda over herself.
    I’d known her for six months and never seen her laugh outright. It was a good feeling if only temporary but maybe even this would show her things could get better.
    “Listen Saint Marley, don’t go trashing my family. At least none of them spread manure from the church door to the altar.”
    “Oh, trust you to bring that up.”
    “That’s why she’s hanging out here,” I explained. “The Baptist church elders are out to lynch her.”
    Lacey’s smiled faded. She looked at Marley and then me.
    “Really?”
    Before Marley could answer, I jumped in with the story. “It came with Marley’s handling of the Christmas pageant. Marley took over the pageant, just as she takes over everything she’s associated with, and decided that what they really needed was to have Mary ride into the church on a real donkey. That wasn’t too bad, despite the little deposit the donkey left on the way up the center aisle; it was the loud fart in the middle of the prayers and the hysteria it caused among the junior choir that sent events spiraling downhill.”
    Lacey was laughing again and even Marley stopped looking like she had a bellyache. “The sheep and the cow were no better behaved and the smell of barnyard did nothing to improve the behavior of the choir, and what should have been a magical evening turned into Barnum & Bailey when one little angel stepped forward for her solo and joined the rest of the animals, peeing on the altar steps.”
    “That wasn’t my fault,” Marley protested. “I can’t be held responsible for that kid’s bladder control.”
    “Oh yeah? Didn’t you fill them full of juice and cookies before the parade?”
    Marley was never one to give up on a good idea. “The church was packed. They never had so many kids in the choir or so many bums in the pews. Wasn’t that the point, to get people out for the Christmas Eve service and make it a real Christmas experience?”
    “Perhaps it was just too real for the elders,