Gumbo Limbo Read Online Free PDF Page B

somebody’s business. Roll with it. “Has he been there long enough to make a pig of himself?”

    “Four days. Two usually does it.” Mock disgust in her tone. “He’s due back tonight, if he can still manage to walk. You know his ritual tour of restaurants. He feels it’s cultural duty to sample every establishment with four stars. The last time I visited the doctor, I picked up literature. How to Combat Gout.”
    I wanted to stall, to think this one through. Zack hadn’t told Claire that he’d come to Key West. I had to keep my trap shut. Carmen made a display of sniffing the cold coffee dregs. I forced my mind back to Claire: “The kids?”
    “The twins are being athletic. Jack’s at hockey camp in Champaign and Matt’s at basketball camp in Wisconsin. This is the first summer they’ve been apart. Kathryn’s spending the summer at Zack’s mother’s, helping her volunteer at a retirement home.”
    “So you’re all alone in the mansion.”
    “Alex, it’s the drudgery of suburbia. Tennis and wallpapering, gardening, lunches with the ladies, each of us trying to eat healthier than the other. I, for one, sneak home and pillage the fridge. I should have gone with Zack.”
    “Why didn’t you?”
    “My friend Pamela opened a French fabric store the day before yesterday. I helped decorate the shop. I organized the grand opening, hired the caterer, all that.”
    “Any chance he was coming home via Key West?”
    Shit. Why the hell did I say that?
    “He wouldn’t visit without me. I wish I were there right now. I saw on TV it’s hotter in downtown Chicago than it is in South Florida.” She paused. I could almost see her in thought. “Why did you ask?”
    “No reason. Just his typical cryptic crap on my answering machine. Could you get him to call me when he gets home?”
    “Alex, is something wrong?”
    Shit, again. She’d heard it in my voice. “No, but something’s
different. I might actually have money to invest, the next month or two. I need advice.”
    “He always tells me: oil, guns, and butter.”
    “You misunderstood,” I said. “That’s party supplies.”
    “You’ll never change, Alex. I hope we see you soon. But, look. We know our boy can get wacky behind a couple of beers in the tropics. If Zachary shows his face down there, promise me you’ll be his guardian angel.”
    “Only as a favor to you, my love. I hate baby-sitting, but I promise.”
    “I’ll take that. You’re always good about promises.”
    I was suddenly an accomplice to something. I had just bullshitted a friend for no explainable reason. Zack had pulled a stunt and I didn’t know why. But my indignation, my moralistic high ground, had skidded into the sewer.
    Carmen had made fresh coffee. She poured herself a cup and waited until I hung up. “So, whose wife you going to boink now?”
    “I don’t boink wives. Where the hell did you get that word?”
    “The morning ‘raunch jocks’ out of Tampa.”
    “Surely you can find better purveyors of vocabulary and entertainment.”
    “They play that station at work. We ladies figure if we complain long enough, we might get a sex-harassment case out of it. If all the guys can go postal, at least we should get to sue.”
    “You work in a hazardous environment, in the first place …”
    “You ever wonder why so may post office employees go batshit?”
    “You hear whacko stories, but no theories, no reasons.”
    Carmen took small sips, as if drinking a high-test Cuban buche. “We all know why it happens. But nobody’s got the guts to say it in public. Too afraid of the PCP.”
    I waited.
    “Political Correctness Police. It’s like this. Three people, two
guys and me, we take the post office job-app test. Each of us gets a ninety-five. We all have equal chances of being hired. But John Smith was in the military. He gets an extra five points. He gets hired before me. Bill Jones is a Vietnam combat veteran with a Purple Heart. He gets ten bonus points, and he gets