Further Adventures Read Online Free PDF Page B

hour.” For the first time Perry said something to Amelia in a gentle tone of Voice. “You know why Messican men all have mustaches?” He answered it himself. “So they can look like their mothers!” Perry’s laugh sounded like Harley choking it was the only Sound in the room.
    “Look you finish wiring up those lights?” Nilo wanted to know.
    Perry shrugged & he threw a rubber bone over to Princess. It bounced off the wall and landed between her front paws where she ignored it. “What’s the point?”
    “Point is the power ain’t goin’ to be off forever and when he gets here I don’t want to be trippin’ over things in the dark like a fool.” Nilo tossed Perry a flashlight.
    Perry sat up Indian style he got busy fixing the wires on a pair of lamps shaped like bowls of fruit spray-painted gold. “Where’s my needle-nose pliers?” He shined his flashlight around the floor he located them in front of Amelia’s feet. “Kick ’em over Senorita.” Amelia did not do it. Perry crouched down to pick them up & held them close in front of her face & menaced her with them making the pliers open & close a few times then he went back to work on the fruit bowl Lamps.
    Nilo checked his watch again he yawned. From 10 feet away I smelled the sour beer & dirty teeth. “What do you do?” he asked me. Idid not give this kidnapper the satisfaction. Then he asked me again & he wanted the Respect of my reply. “Tell me.”
    “Retired.”
    Nilo shifted his Buttocks on the windowsill it Sounded like any second the wood was going to split underneath him. “Retired what?” He was getting nothing from me. “Retired dogcatcher? Retired garbage-man?” Nilo was not a interested party just trying to goat me.
    Princess dropped her rubber bone at my feet.
    “What’d you do before you got retired from it?” Perry got in on the Act.
    The dog reared back and barked to command my attention. I threw the bone & answered Nilo simultaneous. “Doctor.” I was NOT going to let that cheap bully feel Superior to me! But my answer meant something special to Perry because for the moment he lost his interest in the lamp.
    “Jew doctor?”
    Amelia squeezed my hand and I did not say anything back.
    “We let a kike into our home?” Perry asked the room. Nilo laughed like it was the punch line of a dirty joke. Perry had his teeth into something fun i.e. Yours Truly and he just fiddled with the shaft of the screwdriver & flicked the loose wires back & forth to give his twitchy fingers some business to do. “You a kike Izzie? You a Zog Jew bastard?”
    I gave him my profile. “Kish mir in tuchas!” I was not going to admit anything !
    What happened after that I imagine now as if I did not see it from in that house but I saw it from somewhere in the Air over the East 8th. I imagine I see the Lights coming on street by street a line of streetlights flicking on cutting more pieces out of the dark. A rolling wave of Light and a surge of Power humming down the wires under the street under the crabgrass into the walls of that house spraying like a Fountain out of the bare lamp Perry forgot to unplug…Light swelled in the bulb and broke it and let out the smell of Electric smoke & Perry was on thefloor with his hand clamped very tight on that buzzing lamp…his jaws locked together…blue smoke came curling through his fingers with those raw Volts belting into him.
    Nilo tried to pull the plug out of the wall but in the dark again he only knocked over a table it fell between him and the socket. I did not need to signal Amelia what to do nor I did not have to think very cautious about it either. She pulled the front door open so hard it bounced on its hinges & almost slammed shut again in my face. We ran out across the front yard and I heard Nilo shouting his head off in my direction. “Come back here! Help! Help him! You have to you’re a doctor! If he dies it’s gonna be your fault!”
    But I did not stop. I saw Amelia duck into somebody’s