Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

said.
    “Do you really want to come with us?”
    “Wherever you want to go,” I said, “that’s where Mad Poet wants to go. Be it Darien or Delhi or Dubuque. Whither thou goest, Mad Poet shall go. Mad Poet loves you.”
    “All of us?”
    “All of you,” I agreed. “Mad Poet loves one and all, including Naughty Nasty Nancy, who is a mere child of fifteen. Mad Poet loves the daughters of Lancaster.”
    “And the daughters of Lancaster love Mad Poet,” said a small voice at my side.
    “How nice,” said Mad Poet. “How nice indeed.”
    How nice, friend Steve. How nice indeed to be the Mad Poet, at once disarmingly drunk and brilliantly sober, joyously kidnapped by six winsome refugees from the Convent of the Holy Name. For six little maids from school were they, Steve, six little maids from one of those cloistered mausolea to which the Catholic aristocracy condemn their most nubile daughters for the duration of their delicious adolescences. They had stolen away that night shortly after bed check (bed check!) and had borrowed the car of their algebra teacher. Merry Cat was doing the driving. Merry Cat’s name is Mary Katherine O’Shea, and she possesses a license which allows her to drive in the State of Connecticut during daylight hours. If anyone had stopped Merry Cat, she would have been in a whole lot of trouble. No one did, and she wasn’t.
    Merry Cat is sixteen, as are all of them but Naughty Nasty Nancy, the fifteen-year-old witch-girl whose last name is Hall. Merry Cat does have a feline face, with sharply sloping eyebrows and a quick grin. Her hair is black and her skin very fair, and what she looks like is a very classy Irish girl, which is what she is.
    It is also what most of the rest of them are, Irish or Anglo-Irish or Castle Irish or Ascendancy or whatever. Shall I describe the rest of them for you?
    All right, I think I will. But only because you insist, Steve-o.
    Let’s return to the station wagon and do it geographically. Merry Cat, as I said, was driving. Sitting beside her was Dawn Redmond, a soft and quiet girl, soft of face and soft of body, with hair the color of a freshly opened chestnut and a slight complement of freckles on her cheekbones and across the bridge of her nose. She has exceptionally large breasts, and their sensitivity seems to be in proportion to their dimension. She goes all glassy-eyed when they are stroked, and can achieve orgasm from such attention.
    In the back seat Naughty Nasty Nancy sat directly behind Dawn. Naughty Nasty Nancy does not speak too often, but her occasional remarks are always incisive. There is a distinctly fey quality to this girl, Steve. If you were casting Hamlet, you would pick her instantly for Ophelia.
    On Nancy’s right was B.J. B.J. is Barbara Judith Castle. She looks enough like Merry Cat to be her sister, but isn’t. They may be cousins. I’m not certain. My memory of the conversation in which that part came up is somewhat vague, and I don’t know for certain whether they are cousins or lovers. I’m sure it’s one or the other. It’s possible, of course, that they are both.
    Now for the luggage compartment, where I was sitting in a modified lotus position. On my right, Ellen Jamison, red-haired and slim-hipped and flat-chested and freckled. If her father ever loses his several million dollars, she can always earn a living posing for Norman Rockwell. She even has braces on her teeth.
    Let me tell you something, Steve. Nothing brings you all the way back like kissing a girl with braces on her teeth. It makes you want to go home and stand in front of the mirror and squeeze blackheads. An ultimate nostalgia trip as the tongue-tip tickles all that shiny wire.
    And on my left, chubby and giggly and bouncy and rosy-cheeked, Alison Keller. She wears her dark-brown hair in a Dutch cut, and her bangs fall upon her unlined brow. She is happy and bubbly and exuberant, and one is so delighted with this side of her that one doesn’t suspect there is