Legs Read Online Free PDF Page B

imply I was her friend, and
Jack's, too. And I was then, yes I was. I was intuitively in sympathy
with this man and woman who had just introduced me to the rattling,
stammering splatter of violent death. Gee, ain't it swell?
    We walked back to the porch where Fogarty was reading
Krazy Kat.
    "I heard the shooting," Fogarty said, "who
won?"
    "Marcus won," Alice said.
    "I wiped out Mr. Schultz's mouth, if that's a
win."
    "Just what he deserves. The prick killed a kid
cousin of mine last week in Jersey."
    And so I had moral support
for my little moral collapse—which sent a thrill through me, made
me comfortable again on this glorious Sunday in the mountains.
    * * *
    We got into the car and left the Biondo place, Alice
and I in the back seat, Jack up front with Fogarty. Alice previewed
our Sunday dinner for me: roast beef and baked potatoes, and did I
like my beef rare the way Jack liked it, and asparagus from their own
garden, which Tamu, their Japanese gardener, had raised, and apple
pie by their colored maid, Cordelia.
    Alice bulged out of her pink summer cotton in various
places, and my feeling was that she was ready instantly to let it all
flop out whenever Jack gave the signal. All love, all ampleness. all
ripeness, would fall upon the bed, or the ground, or on him, and be
his for the romping. Appleness, leaves, blue sky, white sheets,
erect, red nipples, full buttocks, superb moistness at the
intersection, warm wet lips, hair flying, craziness of joy, pleasure,
wonder, mountains climbable with a stride after such sex. I like her.
    Oxie was asleep on the enclosed porch when we
arrived, more formally known as Mendel (The Ox) Feinstein, one of the
permanent cadre. Oxie was a bull-necked weightlifter with no back
teeth, who'd done a four-year stretch for armed robbery of a shoe
store. The judge specified he do the full four because, when he held
up the lady shoe clerk, he also took the shoes she was wearing.
Justice puts its foot down on Oxie.
    He got up immediately when the key turned in the
front door. We all watched as Alice stopped to coo at two canaries in
a silver cage on the porch. When she went on to the kitchen, Fogarty
sat down on the sofa with Oxie, who made a surreptitious gesture to
Jack.
    "Marion called about a half hour ago," he
whispered. "Here'?"
    Oxie nodded and Jack made facial note of a
transgression by Marion.
    "She wants you to see her this afternoon.
Important, she said."
    "Goddamn it," Jack said, and he went into
the living room and up the stairs two at a time, leaving me on the
porch with the boys. Fogarty solved my curiosity, whispering:
"Marion's his friend. Those two canaries there—he calls one
Alice, one Marion." Oxie thought that was the funniest thing
he'd heard all week, and while he and Fogarty enjoyed the secret, I
went into the living room, which was furnished to Alice's taste:
overstuffed mohair chairs and sofa; walnut coffee table; matching end
tables and table lamps, their shades wrapped in cellophane;
double-thick Persian rug, probably worth a fortune if Jack hadn't
lifted it. My guess was he'd bought it hot; for while he loved the
splendid things of life, he had no inclination to pay for them. He
did let Alice pick out the furniture, for the hot items he kept
bringing home clashed with her plans, such as they were. She'd lined
the walls with framed calendar art and holy pictures—a sepia print
of the Madonna returning from Calvary and an incendiary, bleeding
sacred heart with a cross blooming atop the bloody fire. One wall was
hung with a magnificent blue silk tapestry. a souvenir from Jack's
days as a silk thief. Three items caught my eye on a small bookshelf
otherwise full of Zane Grey and James Oliver Curwood items: a copy of
Rabelais, an encyclopedia of Freemasonry, and the Douay Bible
sandwiched between them.
    When he came down. I asked about the books. The
Freemasonry? Yeah, he was a Mason. "Good for business," he
said. "Every place you go in this country, the Protestant sons
of