Poor Butterfly Read Free Page A

answer he wanted.
    “My Aund Saurah,” the kid mumbled. “She hah a gog. Barry.”
    “How’s his breath?” asked Shelly, reaching over to open the boy’s mouth for a close look.
    “Breaff?” the kid said with Shelly’s finger in his mouth.
    “Smells like a sewer, right?” asked Shelly.
    The kid shook his head in agreement.
    “Thought so,” said Shelly, standing straight and tapping the pliers in his palm. “How much you think your Aunt Slush would pay for a pill, something she could put in Harry’s food to make his breath smell good.”
    “Aunt Saurah and Barry,” the boy corrected cautiously through a mass of cotton.
    “That’s a non sequitur,” said Shelly, pleased with himself. He looked at me for vocabulary credits. I smiled. I wanted something from Shelly.
    “Barry bides,” the kid said.
    “So, he bites,” responded Shelly, undeterred. “Is that any reason he should be allowed to smell like a cow’s ass?”
    “Sounds like a great idea to me, Shel,” I said, trying to draw his attention. “I think you just got it from me.”
    He woke from his dream of a multimillion-dollar dog breath fortune. “I’ve been thinking about this for years,” he insisted, pointing the pliers at me.
    “Am I done?” asked the kid, pulling cotton from his mouth and throwing the bloody mess in the spit sink.
    “Yeah, sure,” said Shelly absently.
    The kid threw off the dirty towel around his neck, jumped from the chair, and ran out the door.
    “I’m going to San Francisco, Shel,” I said. “Job for the Opera.”
    “Mildred says she likes opera.” He looked past me at the door as if his wife, Mildred, would come bursting in, demanding that he clean up the mess. A few months earlier Mildred had run off with a Peter Lorre impersonator. I’d helped Shelly get her back and get her off a murder charge when the guy was killed. I thought Shelly was better off without her, but he still worshipped the ground she spat on.
    “Maybe Mildred really likes opera,” I said.
    Shelly grunted. “I’ve got this chemical somewhere,” he said, turning from me and walking to one of his grime-covered cabinets. “Salesman gave it to me. If it works on people, why not animals?”
    “I need twenty bucks, Shel,” I said.
    He stopped in front of the cabinet, adjusted his glasses and cigar, and looked at me again.
    “Five minutes ago we were barely acquainted. Now you want twenty bucks and we’re friends.”
    “I didn’t say we weren’t friends. I said we weren’t partners.”
    “I like to think of us like … Cagney and Pat O’Brien in Crash Dive ,” Shelly said.
    “You’re a visionary, Shel. I’ll get an advance in San Francisco and send it back to you Monday.”
    Dash had jumped into the warm spot of the chair the little boy had vacated.
    “No you won’t. You’ll forget. Someone will try to kill you or something and you’ll forget.” He pouted. “Money doesn’t come that easily, Toby. Here’s what that kid just paid me for pulling a tooth.”
    He dug into his pocket, came up with a crumpled piece of newspaper. He put his cigar in his mouth and placed the pliers on top of the cabinet where he’d be sure to forget he’d left them and opened the piece of newspaper to reveal two quarters.
    “Shel, I know you’ve got money, remember.”
    “Twenty,” he said, thinking about it “In return for which you promise to give up all claim on my dog breath idea.”
    “You got it,” I said.
    He reached into his back pocket under his smock and came up with a wallet. He turned his back so I couldn’t see, fished out a twenty, returned the wallet to his pocket, and turned to hold out a crumpled bill.
    “Just a loan,” he said.
    “A loan,” I agreed, taking the bill and putting it in my pocket. Shelly turned to his cabinet and opened it.
    “I’ll call,” I said, moving to the door.
    Shelly grunted.
    Before I left the Farraday Building, I went to the office of Jeremy Butler, poet and former pro wrestler, who