Jack and the Beanstalk (Matthew Hope) Read Free

Leona’s, it nonetheless revealed more of her than might have been appropriate in a tacky little roadside joint. I was wearing a white dinner jacket and a black bow tie, which I had tied myself with great difficulty before leaving the house that night.
    I should add that before the fight I had brown eyes and dark hair, and I possessed a face my partner Frank classifies in the “fox” category. (He himself, by his own system, has a “pig” face.) I weighed a hundred and ninety pounds soaking wet, which I was close to being on that humid night. I was an even six feet tall. After the fight, my eyes were black and blue, my hair was as red as Dale’s (or at least a patch of it was, where my head was bangedrepeatedly against the hatch-cover tabletop), my face looked rather more piggish than it had earlier—and I was short .
    “Don’t you like the music, lady?” the blond cowboy said, grinning. His teeth were very white. His eyes were blue.
    “The music’s fine,” Dale said without looking at him.
    “You don’t seem to like it much, though,” he said, almost apologetically.
    “It’s fine,” Dale said.
    “Hey, Charlie!” he called over to the jukebox. “The lady likes the music we picked!”
    Charlie came over.
    “That right?” he said. He, too, was grinning, his teeth flashing brightly against his black beard. “Well, I’m right pleased, ma’am. You like the music, too?” he asked, turning suddenly to me, the same lopsided grin on his face. I realized all at once that they had both been drinking heavily. And I reasoned that the best thing to do with a pair of happy drunks was humor them.
    Smiling, I said, “It’s okay, you did all right.”
    “Only okay ?” Charlie said, and opened his eyes very wide. “He only thinks it’s okay , Jeff.”
    “Lady thinks it’s fine ,” Jeff said, sounding hurt.
    “Lady must be right, then,” I said, still smiling. “Why don’t you go sit down and listen to it?”
    “You asking us to leave ?” Charlie said, seemingly surprised.
    “We’d like to be alone, if you don’t mind,” I said.
    “He’d like to be alone,” Charlie said, grinning again.
    “Yeah, I heard him,” Jeff said, grinning back.
    “Can’t say I blame him, though,” Charlie said.
    “Don’t blame him a’tall,” Jeff said, and glanced into the front of Dale’s gown, still grinning.
    Like a grown-up scolding two naughty youngsters—which, from my elderly advanced age of thirty-eight, they actuallyseemed to be—I said, “Come on, fellas, behave yourselves. Go on back to your own table, huh?”
    It became immediately apparent that this was exactly the wrong thing to say. The grins dropped from both faces at the same time. Jeff put his hands flat on the tabletop and leaned into me. The reek of alcohol when he spoke was overpowering. A scrap of potato chip clung to his blond mustache.
    “We ain’t got a table,” he said.
    “We been standin’ at the bar,” Charlie said.
    “Then go on back to the bar,” I said.
    “We like it here,” Charlie said.
    “Look,” I said, “let’s not create a problem, okay? My friend and I—”
    “Who’s got a problem ?” Charlie said. “ You got a problem, Jeff?”
    “No problem a’tall,” Jeff said. “Maybe the man in the monkey suit here’s got the problem.”
    “You been to the senior prom?” Charlie said.
    Dale sighed. “Let’s go, Matthew,” she said, and started to rise.
    “Stay put, lady,” Charlie said, and placed his hand on her shoulder.
    Dale shrugged it off at once, her eyes flashing. “Let’s go,” she said again.
    “You talking to me, lady?” Jeff said. “Where you wanna go?”
    “Take you anyplace you wanna go,” Charlie said.
    “Matthew....,” she said.
    “Matthew don’t wanna go just yet,” Charlie said. “Ain’t that right, Matthew? Matthew’s enjoyin’ this here conversation.”
    “Matthew likes talkin’,” Jeff said.
    “Matthew’s a big talker,” Charlie said.
    “Okay, fellas,” I