Mondo Desperado Read Free

blonde hair, finely chiselled
features – quite aristocratic – and foolishly almost blowing my cover.
    ‘The chops, of course!’ she said, gliding towards the kitchenette and humming to herself as she stacked the crockery on the draining board.
    ‘The chops! Why – they’re fine!’ I called out. ‘Matter of fact – they’re just about the damned tastiest chops I’ve ever had, in this house or
anywhere else, Cora!’
    ‘I’m glad!’ she said, and continued humming – just a soft, regular tune, just about as far from ‘Beat Girl’ or ‘Bachelor Party Bunny’ as it was
possible to get and showed you just how clever little Miss Cora Myers could be! It was difficult at that moment not to dump the chops on the floor right where I sat and get it all over with there
and then. To cry: ‘Why! What has gone wrong! Why all of a sudden are you behaving like this! Maybe it is true! Maybe I don’t have enough to stick a stamp but you could have told me!
After all we’ve been through, Cora, you could have told me! You didn’t have to go running off – there! Where to after this?
The Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks
?
The Mini
Skirt Mob
?
Nightmare Rampage of the Hellcats
? Cora! You hear me – Cora Myers?’
    *
    As I sat there I could hear it all plain as day. See myself standing right there in front of her, pulling no punches as I said it loud and clear. But it wasn’t the only
thing I could see. I could see her too. Miss Cora ‘I swear I’m not a man-eater’ Myers, with her arms outspread and her innocent eyes, going: ‘Larry, I don’t know what
you’re talking about! Have you been drinking, Larry Bunyan? Because I don’t understand a word you’re saying!’
    I figured on those last coupla words snapping me like a dry twig.
    ‘No! Sure you don’t!’ I’d snap as I smacked my fist down on the table.
    ‘Honey! I don’t understand!’ she’d say with, sure as hell, that old trembling hand placed against her throat, those same old mock-dramatic tones!
    ‘No – sure you don’t! And you don’t slip out of this house every day just as soon as you get me gone, either! You don’t climb into your figure-hugging pants and hit
the club in your dragster to meet your so-called “with-it” friends? Just who in the hell do you think you are, Cora? Mamie Van Doren? Go on then – laugh! Laugh at him, the
mutthead of a husband who hasn’t the faintest idea what you’ve been up to! Except that’s where you’re wrong, baby! Sure, I’m a mutthead, a mutthead who happens to be
lucky enough to have a good friend by the name of Walter Skelly who put me on to you just before it was too late. Surprised, huh? Thought you might be! Yeah, your little wheeze has been rumbled,
Cora baby! And now the whole world’s gonna know it – and you know why? Because I’m gonna see that they do! This time around, Larry Bunyan’s through taking it! I’m
gonna show you and I’m gonna show them! Hey! Hello there! I’m Larry Bunyan – I don’t have enough to stick a stamp! But what I do have is a little self-respect! You listening
to me, drop-out wife?’
    It was the greatest feeling in the world thinking it all through for myself that way and as I wiped my mouth with the napkin, I looked right over at her and smiled.
    ‘Cora,’ I said, ‘I could have eaten that dinner and ten more like it.’
    ‘My, but you’re in good humour today, Larry,’ she smiled as she removed the plate, ‘it’s not often you say that to me.’
    ‘I guess it isn’t,’ I said, ‘not that it would make a lotta difference either way for most likely you’d be too hopped out of your head to hear it anyway.’ The
words were outa my mouth before I knew it – I coulda cheered, goddamit!
    ‘What?’ she responded, in, of course – mock-dramatic tones!
    ‘Oh, come now, Cora,’ I said, before she got a chance to get into her stride, ‘there’s no need for all that!’
    Her trembling hand stroked her throat as I