The Black Marble Read Online Free PDF

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    Philo Skinner lit his sixty-third cigarette of that calendar day and sat on the grooming table and stared outside at the night rain. Emptiness, loss. Yearning for … for a chance. Just a goddamn chance , is all he asked.
    â€œIf I ever knew for sure what I suspect about you, Philo, it’d be sayonara, baby. I ain’t Betsy or that other bitch you were married to. I won’t put up with that shit.”
    Philo Skinner heard not a word. He dragged deeply on the Camel, exhaled up through his nose, back down into his tortured lungs, and stared at the rain. Yearning.
    â€œIt’s been a rocky go, Philo. I mean it’s been tougher being married to you for two years than it was to Milton for twenty-five years, I can tell you. I’ll try to make it work, you know that. But I’m not gonna put up with any screwing around. You were thinking about nesting with that little bird, weren’t you?”
    And as he would look back on this moment for the rest of his life, Philo Skinner would always wonder precisely what event inspired him. Was it that pathetic fifty-two-year-old erection which died aborning? Was it Mavis’ tongue, sharp as a grooming knife? Stripping away the little he had left the way you’d strip the loins of a schnauzer? Was it that he wanted to cry because Pattie Mae was only nineteen years old? He would always wonder.
    â€œPhilo, were you?”
    But he was already through the door of the grooming room, heading for the kennel, heart thumping, hands and feet and armpits slimy. Philo switched on the light and stood in the center of the 175-foot concrete aisle which dissected the building. There were thirty floor-to-ceiling, chain-link dog pens on each side of the long aisle. Each four-by-eight-foot pen boasted running water, an easy-clean feeding trough, and a warm soft bed off the floor. In addition, each dog pen had a slit-rubber doggie door allowing easy access to outside dog runs twice the size of the inside pens, covered with gravel for the pleasure of the animal and to prevent splayed feet. The outside runs were protected by chain link, ten feet high—completely enclosed on top—not to keep dogs in but to keep thieves out. There were high-wattage security lights and a burglar alarm as well, to safeguard Skinner Kennels from prowling dognappers.
    The inside lights woke several of the more nervous animals who whined when Philo walked to the pen containing Rutherford’s bitch.
    â€œHello, honey,” he whispered to the miniature schnauzer. The dog opened her eyes, wagged her stubby tail a few times and fell back asleep on her foam mattress.
    Rutherford’s bitch wasn’t nearly right. Too cowhocked. Way too throaty. But he knew one that was exactly right.
    â€œGoddamn!” Philo whispered. Then he dropped his cigarette on the kennel floor, stepped on it and went back into the grooming room.
    Philo arrived home that night, during the same hour that Madeline Dills Whitfield was being mercifully rendered unconscious by Chivas Regal and four Dalmanes, during the same hour that a drunken man in a yellow rubber raincoat was reeling through the door of his furnished apartment, dripping wet, eyes raw from vodka and incense and memories of other Russian Christmas Eves.
    Philo made a telephone call to a man who owned a fashionable dress shop on Wilshire Boulevard. Who did other business more profitably.
    â€œHello, Arnold?” Philo whispered into the phone.
    â€œWho’s this?” an irritated voice answered.
    â€œPhilo Skinner.”
    â€œWhy the hell you calling me at home? I told you to forget my home number. What I gotta do, get the fucking number changed?”
    â€œArnold, this is important.”
    â€œI told you, Philo, it’s outta my hands. You owe almost eight dimes. You never shoulda got in so deep, but you did. So you gotta pay and you got two weeks more to do it. Now good night.”
    â€œArnold, wait!” Philo