Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man - Lawrence Block [30]
L.C.
17
Cuernavaca
Larry or Pancho or whoever you are today,
You’ll have to forgive me for being a little drunk as I write this. But if I weren’t a little drunk, maybe more than a little, I couldn’t write to you at all.
You bastard, you rotten bastard.
All you want to do is ruin things for Steve and me. That’s fairly obvious. Just because we are two good people with a chance for happiness you have to be a little fox and spoil the vineyard. It makes me wonder why I ever thought I loved you in the first place. How could anybody possibly love a man like you? That is what I ask myself. Over and over I ask myself how could anyone ever love a man like you because you are no man at all, Larry, no man at all, you have no soul, and if someone cut you open there would be no heart in your body and that is how I feel about you, I swear it is.
Since your only goal in life is to make people miserable I am going to tell you that you are succeeding. Not that Steve and I are miserable because we love each other too deeply ever to be miserable, but we are getting there, thanks to you.
You are like a snake with an apple except you are not good enough to be a snake, you are more like a worm, a worm in an apple and even the apple is rotten and so are you, Larry, you rotten bastard.
Because of you we find ourselves asking ourselves silent questions when we already know the answers, but you make it impossible for us to relax and enjoy our happiness because you plant little doubts in our minds and the doubts feed and fester like lilies that smell worse than weeds.
I wish I were not drunk so that I could tell you just how much I hate you. And no matter what you do that you will not succeed.
I want you to know that, Larry.
If you have the slightest speck of human decency left within you, you will stop writing to us.
Your wife,
Fran
18
c/o Gumbino
311½ West 20th St.
New York 10011
July 9
Mrs. Laurence Clarke
c/o American Express
Cuernavaca, Mexico
Fran(ces)ca mi amore:
You ignorant cunt, if my letters bother you so much why did you just now open this envelope?
Or is it possible that they bother you in a necessary way?
Think about that.
El Gringo
19
c/o Gumbino
311½ West 20th St.
New York 10011
July 9
Mr. Stephen Joel Adel
c/o American Express
Cuernavaca, Mexico
Dear Steve:
As you’ll note, I am no longer living at 74 Bleecker St. I’ve given up the apartment and have signed over the furniture to my erstwhile landlord, a George Ribbentraub. I mention this because it’s possible he may get in touch with Fran in order to recover her set of keys. If she has them on hand, you might suggest that she send them to him at Ribbentraub Realty Corp., 414 East 14th St. I don’t know the zip code.
But that’s nothing to be overly concerned about, Steve. In a way my change of address is linked to the subject of this letter, but that will become more apparent as you read on, and as I write on.
The thing that bothers me, Steve, and that has caused me to resume writing to you after having more or less determined to discontinue our correspondence, is that I have been given to understand that things are deteriorating between you and Fran.
And this bothers me.
To be frank, it bothers the hell out of me. Much as it hurt me to be deprived of my wife and my best friend in one swell foop, I was able to stand it because I was comforted by the thought that you were both involved in a total love relationship that transcended anything you could have had independent of one another.
Now it seems that you aren’t getting along so well. Well, this sort of thing happens all the time, Steve. It seems to have begun rather quickly with you two, but maybe that’s all to the good. The sooner trouble rears its ugly head, the sooner you can reach out with your terrible swift sword and lop that ugly head clean off.
Listen, old buddy, don’t bother