Bad Chili Read Free Page B

passable game of checkers against himself without cheating and knew better than to shit in the kitchen sink it would be a feat of Olympian proportions.
    Charlie was wearing his brown Mike Hammer hat, as I called it. Porkpie, I guess it’s really called, and he had on a blue silk Hawaiian shirt decorated with brightly colored palm trees, parrots, and hula girls. He wore his usual cheap brown suit coat, black plastic Kmart shoes, and his deadpan look. I tell you, there’s nothing better to view from a hospital bed than a Hawaiian shirt flashing out at you from between the lapels of a cheap suit coat, a porkpie resting on top of it all like a rusty bird feeder. He was also carrying a white grease-stained paper bag and another one, brown, minus the grease.
    “I hear you had some squirrel trouble,” Charlie said.
    “Some,” I said.
    “Looks like he gave you hell.”
    “Yeah. You oughta see
him
.”
    “We’re checkin’ now to see the squirrel had an accomplice. You know, a spotter from the woods. We hope to make an arrest before the week’s out. A few other squirrels or blue jays talk, a possum comes in with a word, we might have the bastard’s partner by nightfall.”
    “Hey, make fun. But this mad-squirrel business, it isn’t a light thing. Let me show you where he bit me. Look at that. There’s four stitches there.”
    “I’ve had worse.”
    “From a squirrel?”
    “No. You got me there. . . . You sound funny.”
    “I have a cold.”
    Charlie opened one of the bags and pushed it toward me. It contained a hamburger, french fries, and a malt. “I’ve spent a day or two in the hospital,” Charlie said, “so I thought you might want this — unless they’ve suddenly started hiring French chefs.”
    “Oh, God,” I said, pulling out my sliding table and placing the food on it. “I never thought I’d look forward to a McDonald’s meal.”
    “Stay in here a bit,” Charlie said, “you get so the idea of eatin’ out of trash cans is kind of appealing. By the way, I kept the Spider Man toy comes with it.”
    “You’re welcome to it.”
    “You say that now, but you see it, you’ll want it.”
    “Then don’t let me see it.”
    Charlie put the other sack on the bed and took off his hat and hung it on the back of the guest chair.
    “What’s in the other bag?” I asked.
    “Books. A magazine.”
    “Whatcha got?”
    He took out a magazine titled
Boobs and Butts
, tossed it at me.
    “Oh, great,” I said.
    “What’s the matter? Read that one?”
    “Yeah. Right.”
    “Well, at least you ain’t sharin’ the room. You can whack off without anyone seein’ you.”
    “You can take this back,” I said. “I got enough on my mind without thinking about what I’m not gettin’ and haven’t been gettin’ for a long time.”
    “Hey, I’m married and I’m not gettin’ it. Wife still wants me to quit smokin’ before she’ll give me the business, so to speak. I’m tryin’ to quit, but I haven’t beat it yet. I smoke three or four cigs a day now, but she knows. She’s got like this second sense. She smells smoke, her pussy closes up. So when she ain’t lookin’, I read the magazines. Stay in the bathroom a lot. Run the shower. Wife thinks I am one clean sonofabitch, but I’m in there whacking off.”
    “Perhaps you should try and develop something more than just a sexual relationship, Charlie. You could meld with her mind, her emotions. Really attempt to understand what makes the both of you human beings. Appreciate her more as a woman, less as a sex object.”
    “Yeah, well, that’s all right, but I still want to fuck her.”
    “I hear that.”
    “You know, I don’t get it. My wife, she’s into like saying the right thing. You know. I’m not supposed to say
pussy
’cause it’s degrading. I call her a pussy, I can see that’s degrading. There’s some women I think are cunts, you know. Some guys that are dicks. I mean, you can have a cunt and not be a cunt, and you can have a cunt