Night Relics Read Online Free PDF Page A

He tried to remember exactly how it went; otherwise it didn’t make any sense. A
    television had been on, out by the pool. A highbrow historical program on PBS—some sort of documentary about Israel. A little
    man with a crazy person’s idea of a haircut had been speaking. “Who the hell’s that?” Klein had asked out loud. “He’s Begin,”
    Winters had said, and Klein had nodded seriously, and then said, “Hell, if you looked like that, you’d be beggin’, too.”
    The joke had torn everyone up, especially Winters. People couldn’t repeat it enough times to satisfy themselves. It had gone
    from room to room like a laugh virus. He had roped in something like six potential front men just on the strength of having
    said something that funny. Thinkingabout it now, he nearly laughed all over again, and he pictured Winters, a big man with a face like a boiled ham, laughing
    so hard that it had left him gasping for breath. Winters was one of his silent partners. He represented a firm called Sloane
    Investment Services, which would pretty much own the deed to Klein’s house if his business dealings out in the canyon failed.
    He pushed the thought out of his mind, then abruptly remembered Lorna trying to tell her own joke right afterward. She had
    been out in the kitchen for an hour or so with Uncle Gin and Aunt Tonic, and that hadn’t helped matters. When everyone was
    laughing at Klein’s joke, she had come into the room, and then when someone told her what Klein had said, she had smiled,
    but pretty clearly hadn’t understood it. Almost at once she had announced that she had a better one.
    Somehow, she had thought it would be a good idea to work through the naked man and the elephant joke, of all the damned stupid
    things: “What did the elephant say to the naked man?” the joke went. Then the punch line: “How do you breathe through that
    little trunk?” Hah, hah, hah. That’s what it was worth, about three hahs, and that was when you told it right.
    Anyway, while everyone except Lorna was still laughing about the Begin joke, she had stood up straight, as if reciting, and
    started out: “What did the elephant say to the naked man?” There had been a silence in the room, partly out of embarrassment.
    Klein had wanted to kill her. Then, with a loopy grin, she had delivered the punch line, or what she remembered as the punch
    line: “How do you breathe through that dick?” she had said.
    The silence lasted another five seconds, and then the room just came apart. People were laughing so hard that drinks got sloshed
    onto the carpet. One man got chest pains, and they had to lay him out on the couch until he could take his nitro tablet and
    boost his heart back up to full power. Klein’s Begin joke was forgotten, although whenhe had reminded people of it later, they still thought it was pretty funny.
    On the way home, Lorna had wanted to talk about her joke, how successful it had been. “Wasn’t I funny?” she had asked.
    “A scream,” he had said, and then he realized that she had no clue that she had screwed up the punch line, that people were
    laughing because she had gotten it so stupidly and inconceivably wrong. She had never figured that out. So he had told her,
    very patiently, right there in the car….
    He elbowed the unpleasant memory into the back of his mind and watched Imelda’s legs as she dusted her way across the room.
    She was just about to leave when he signaled her again. She smiled, and he wondered what her smile meant. There was a lot
    in a smile, if you knew how to look. Sometimes he wondered if her smile was meant to ridicule him.
    “Quita usted el papel de la puerta”
he said, gesturing toward the front of the house where the offensive bumper sticker was still glued to the door.
    “
Sí, señor, ¿cuál puerta?
”
    “En … el frente. De la entrada.”
    Feeling lousy, he broke up the rest of his rice cake with the point of the knife. Lorna drank too much. Unless it was a