Gator didn't sleep at all anymore. Even when Shirley wasn't home. She kept Alexa on, playing the Ben Shappy show to ward of burglaries while she went out to shop.
"Trump was shot at but he stood. And we stood with him," Ben Shappy was saying in the background.
Gator couldn't do anything but stand and listen to the Republican. He moved his eyes from side to side, trying to look at Moses. He'd ordered the cardboard cutout from Stanley's Standees. But the transaction had been problematic. Gator was first sent a Nubian gentleman. That was not the image that Gator was expecting. "More like Santa," he specified in the email regarding the return and exchange.
Moses, the cardboard cutout, never said anything. But the cardboard cutouts of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Freud had departed within an hour of Shirley setting them against the dry wall.
"How come you can leave and I can't?" Gator asked Freud.
"We are immortal writers and you haven't written original anything that has passed the Heavenly Arts Council."
"So?" Gator had shouted at Freud's back.
Freud turned, "No after-death stipend has been awarded your cause."
"I need a drink," Fitzgerald moaned, shaking the cardboard glitter from his jacket.
"How come Moses can't move?" Gator asked.
"Did he write anything worthwhile?" Scottie reflected, gently rubbing his head.
"The Ten Commandments!"
"Ah, that list."
'What do you mean, that list?"
Fitzegerald looked at the cutout, "Are you certain it's the same Moses?"
El-Don wanted a Winchell's donut. It had been announced that a Winchell's was opening in Longmont in the fall. It wasn't yet spring. He drove to the Barvarian Bakery and Coffee and ordered a cream cheese Danish to go. No one that he knew saw him enter or leave the bakery.
The Danish didn't satisfy him. He drove to Boulder and ordered a Maple donut and coffee at a local cafe. He sat down and pulled a book out from his pocket. He'd grabbed it from the box of books in his garage that he'd taken from his dad's house when his dad passed away. Great Stories from the Saturday Evening Post.
The paperback book, published in 1947, had seen better days. El-Don felt happy just looking at the book. Real stories with real meaning. He opened the book to the first page.
The best from 200 top notch love stories, humorous yarns, and tales with a more serious purpose, written by big-name writers in magazine fiction.
WHAT IS A HERO?
Is he a gent with muscles . . . or money? Is he lucky in cards . . . or love? Or is he a little of all, with something extra thrown in? In any case, you'll agree that a hero of fiction is a person about whom the reader is likely to say: How I'd love that guy!
Here in thirteen Great Stories from the Saturday Evening Post you, the reader, are thirteen times the hero - or heroine - in thirteen yarns that cover that cover the field of reading pleasure from Johnny Kix' delapidated Los Angeles scene to Rex Jackson's "Navajo trading post" where everyone learns everything about every inch of the White House reservation, to the hilarious antics of Arthur's Ark to the quiet common sense of Pastor Adam Yamaguchi in a POW camp.
Waiting for Flora, El-Don decided to read the short story entitled "Evidence of Things Seen."
Trader Jamison Grere, whom the locals called Tall Golden Man, looked over the expanse of lawn on a sunny morning and found it good. He had just completed a relaxed prowl through the trading post. The "Navajos" were loading up their trucks with canned peaches, beef and pork and all the items they'd been forced to forgo because of the red man's war. Jamison walked into his office and threw his hat at the coat rack in the corner. Nailed it again! Outside his window the silversmiths, home from the fighting and factory jobs, were taking out their tools and setting up camp.
Jewelry! Looking back at his desk calendar, Jamison swore suddenly. If Smiling Woman didn't come in soon with a batch of bracelets, Lowel's Easter Order for Largo del Mar would be late getting off. The phone rang sharply.
It was Mr. InBetween. Just in time.
"Oh Fudge! I nearly forgot," Jamison said. "Did you put the spell on Flora?"
"Yeah."
"Just like Teary?"
"Yes, boss."
"Put me down for three gees." Trader Jamison said.
"Same as last time? Mr. Inbetween checked his facts.
"Just like last time."
El-Don rubbed his eyes. The page didn't look right. He looked at it again.
As Jamison cradled the phone against his shoulder, he noticed that among the "Navajos" piling out of the dusty limosine was Smiling Woman, wrapped the bright-hued blanket without which no "Navajo" feels dressed at any season. When the door to his office flew open and there stood Peg, Jamison forgot everything he was supposed to be doing. Peg was tall and slim and born in another country. Her hair was long, always long and looking young.
"Hey dad," she said. "Can I have my old job back? I've got some new ideas, all gorgeous."
"Why baby-girl," Jamison said, "that would be hunky dory but you're a married woman now."
"Yes but RJ is bossing me around and if I want to design jewelry, I'm going to every time I feel like it," Peg said defiantly.
"Hello?" Mr InBetween said through the phone.
"Who's that?" Peg said.
"Oh, just a dealer."
"I thought you got rid of the Mr. Inbetweens."
"Well....." Trader Jamison said.
"Hey," Mr. Inbetween shouted over the line, "do I still have job?"
"Listen, you just make sure that Flora manifests..." Jamison said into the phone.
El-Don did not understand what was happening to him. He shook his head. What other stories were in the book? Did he have diabetes?
Right on time, Flora walked into the cafe and greeted her father. She sat down across from him and metamorphed into a giant prairie dog wearing a red ribbon. El-Don knew she was in danger. Where did Smiling Woman go? He looked down into the paperback in his hands and felt himself disappear. How could he save Flora from being the subject of target practice?
Rabbi Dinah sat still. Then she placed her fingers on the keyboard. Her coffee was already cold.
I am offering my sincere apologies, she wrote. She did not want to offer her sincere apologies.
I am deeply saddened to hear that my eulogy of your mother caused anguish and pain to you and your family members. Rabbi Dinah was not saddened at all. The entire purpose of the eulogy was to cause the maximum amount of psychological terrorism that could be unleashed on Lucinda Bourbon's family. Rabbi Dinah had coached Lucinda in the art of flame torching Lucinda's entire family. That's right, no one could counter the extreme lies that Lucinda left for Rabbi Dinah to pronounce over Lucinda's dead body because, as Jewish faith dictated, they were not allowed to discuss the deceased in any other manner than in the way the deceased wanted to be remembered for thirty days after death. In this case, as a Jew, when no one in the family, including Lucinda was a Jew. And not merely not a Jew but instead a Pseudo-Jew-Sami-Mannughnite-Zen-Benedictine Nun-Guan-Yin-Protestant-Victim of circumstance. It was a perfect set up. Except Lucinda's daughter was being a pain in the tukus.
What had the Ethics Commission said about the matter? Rabbi Dinah checked her email box. Maybe she could hide in their coat tails, as usual.
Regalia
you've lost, my friend
artists always
in the long run
win over generals
Marlon Brando as Peregrine in Bugsy Patterson's Bad For Each Other --
Coming Soon - Chapter Thirty
#longmont #colorado #rabbidinah #keithkumasenabbott #keithabbott #gator #matcha #saturdayeveningpost #marlonbrando #bourbon
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