Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man - Lawrence Block [8]
Ah, those were the days, Steverino ….
I didn’t get totally wiped out this time, however. I kept on drinking, gradually slowing the pace and letting myself get wrapped up by first the jukebox and then some old thoughts. I’d planned on devoting the major portion of the evening to self-pity. In fact I was looking forward to it. But self-pity is like cops and cabs and women—it’s never there when you want it. I would try to tell myself how classically desperate my situation was, how absolutely everything had gone wrong at once, even to Jennifer having her period.
I know that you know about Jennifer, but I don’t know whether or not you told Fran. I was wondering about that as I sloshed down the India Pale Ale, as it happens, and I tried to put myself in your position. If I were fucking the wife of my best friend, I asked myself, and if I happened to know that said best friend had an occasional piece on the side, would I tell the best friend’s wife about it? I could see one good reason to do so. It could lessen her guilt, after all. I mean, cheating on a cheater is just turnabout, which we all know is fair play.
But on second thought, I decided that if I were fucking my best friend’s wife, the last thing I would want to do is cut down the guilt. I mean, man, without the guilt, what would be left of your relationship? You can both feel guilty about how you’re giving the shaft to old Laurence with a U, Clarke with an E. Your mutual guilt holds you together, no? The day you begin to exorcise my ghost, the day there’s just the two of you in that bed without my ectoplasmic presence to keep you company, that’s the day you two will begin to fall apart.
I’m a sneaky son of a bitch, aren’t I?
Ah, well. If you haven’t told Fran about Jennifer, you might as well tell her now. I’m glad I told you, Steve, and I’m also glad I never introduced you to Jennifer or you might have taken them both along to old Me-hee-co. Who steals a man’s wife steals trash, but he who steals a mistress—
Speaking of trash, I have a thing to tell you, Steve, and I don’t know how to do it without violating the bounds of good taste. The thing is, even without self-pity, I did find myself thinking a lot about my relationship with Fran. Naturally I was seeing it in a new light now. For something like three months she had been having an affair with you, and I was just now learning about it.
(Incidentally, where did you screw? Our apartment or your loft? It’s hard for me to believe that you spent all that much time together. Fran didn’t have too many unexplained absences. Oh, well. If you ever reply to this letter, you might let me know how you worked out the mechanics of the affair. I find myself oddly, even dispassionately, interested in that sort of thing. God knows why.)
What I realized in the Kettle, though, was that although I never suspected anything at the time, anything at all, I could in retrospect almost put a date on the beginning of your affair with Fran.
It must have started just about the time she wouldn’t swallow.
Oh, hell. There’s no way to be tasteful about this. And I could not mention it at all, but the typewriter tells me it wants to discuss it, and I already explained about giving this typewriter its head.
And that’s what this anecdote is about, anyway. The giving of head.
Well, I don’t suppose I have to tell you that Fran gives sensational head, Steve. You probably think the girl is a born cocksucker. Actually, I can say with a certain amount of pride that I taught her virtually everything she knows in that department. When I first meet your mistress, Steveroo, she was a far cry from the Oral Vacuum Cleaner