(LB2) Shakespeare's Landlord Read Online Free PDF

Winthrops—not Beanie; her husband, Howell Junior; her oldest son, Bobo; or his younger siblings, Amber-Jean and Howell Three.
    Beanie’s maiden name had been, incredibly, Bobo: Beatrice (“Beanie”) Bobo. The Bobos were sixth-generation Arkansas aristocrats, and I suspected Beanie had a slave-owning gene still in her DNA.
    “Here I am, Lily!” Beanie cried with exaggerated joy, as though I had been on tenterhooks waiting for her appearance. And Beanie always makes appearances; she never just walks into a room. She popped into the doorway now like she was appearing in an English comedy: Attractive Lady Beatrice, on her way to play tennis, stops to speak to the parlor maid.
    Beanie is undeniably attractive. She’s in her middle forties, but her body doesn’t know it. Though her face is not actually pretty, Beanie is a past mistress at maximizing what she has. Her long, thick hair is colored a discreet chestnut brown, her contacts make her brown eyes darker, and her tan is always touched up in the winter with a sunbed session or two a week.
    “Listen, Lily, wasn’t that awful about Pardon?” Beanie was in her chatty mode. “I went to high school with his little sister! Of course, even then Pardon wasn’t the easiest person to get along with, but still…to be killed like that! Isn’t it awful?”
    “Yes.”
    “Ah…well, Lily, if you find Bobo’s checkbook, please leave it on my desk. He hasn’t balanced it in six months, and I promised him I’d do it. Though when he thinks I’ll find the time, I don’t know!”
    “All right.”
    “Oh, and Lily—Bobo tells me you take karate. Can that be true?”
    “Yes.” I knew I was being uncooperative. I was in a bloody mood today. And I hated the idea of the Winthrops discussing me. Most days, I find Beanie amusing but tolerable, but today she was irritating beyond measure. And Beanie felt the same way about me.
    “Well, now, we always wanted Bobo to take tae kwan do, but there never was anyone here to teach it, except that man who went broke after six months. Who do you take from?”
    “Marshall Sedaka.”
    “Where does he teach it? At his gym?”
    “He teaches goju karate to adults only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights in the aerobics room at Body Time, seven-thirty to eight-thirty.” Those three nights were the highlights of my week.
    Beanie decided I was experiencing some kind of warming trend, and she beamed at me.
    “So you don’t think he’d teach Bobo? After all, Bobo’s seventeen, and as much as I hate to admit it, he’s practically an adult—physically, at least,” Beanie added rather grimly.
    “You can ask him,” I replied. There wasn’t a hope in hell of Marshall taking on a spoiled kid like Bobo, but it wasn’t my business to tell Beanie that.
    “I just may do that,” Beanie said, making a little note in the tiny spiral-bound notebook she keeps in her purse all the time. (That’s something Beanie and Claude Friedrich have in common, I reflected.) And Beanie would call, too; one of the few things I find to admire about the woman is her devotion to her children. “Well,” Beanie said dismissively, looking up and turning slightly as if she was already half out the door, “I’m just going to freshen up for a minute and then I’m off to the club. Don’t forget about the checkbook, please!”
    “I won’t.” I bent over to retrieve a sweatshirt Bobo had apparently used to clean his car’s windshield.
    “You know,” Beanie said reflectively, “I think Pardon was that Marshall Sedaka’s partner.”
    “What?” The sweatshirt slipped from my fingers; I groped around for it, hoping I hadn’t heard correctly.
    “Yes,” said Beanie firmly. “That’s right. Howell Junior told me, and I thought it was funny at the time, because Pardon was the most unfit man I’ve ever seen. He wouldn’t walk down the street if he could ride. That gym’s been a great success. It must have made Pardon a lot of money. Wonder who he left