The Pigman Read Free Page A

the big words, and I remember the action. Which sort of makes sense when you stop to think that Lorraine is going to be a famous writer and I’m going to be a great actor. Lorraine thinks she could be an actress, but I keep telling her she’d have to be a character actress, which means playing washwomen on TV detective shows all the time. And I don’t mean that as a distortion, like she always says I do. If anyone distorts, it’s that mother of hers. The way her old lady talks you’d think Lorraine needed internal plastic surgery and seventeen body braces, but if you ask me, all she needs is a little confidence. She’s got very interesting green eyes that scan like nervous radar—that is they used to until the Pigman died. Ever since then her eyes have become absolutely still, except when we work on this memorial epic. Her eyes come to life the second we talk about it. Her wanting to be a writer is part of it, I guess, but I think we’re both a little anxious to get all that happened in place and try to understand why we did the crazy things we did.
    I suppose it all started when Lorraine and I and these two amoebae called Dennis Kobin and Norton Kelly were hot on those phone gags last September. We did the usual ones like dialing any number out of the book and asking “Is your refrigerator running?”
    “Yes.”
    “Go catch it then.”
    And we called every drugstore.
    “Do you have Prince Albert in a can?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then let him out.”
    But then we made up a new game in which the object was to keep a stranger talking on the phone as long as possible. At least twice a week we’d meet for a telephone marathon. Wednesday afternoons we’d have it at Dennis’ house because his mother goes shopping at the supermarket and his father doesn’t get home from work until after six P.M. , even when he’s sober. And on Sundays we’d do it at Norton’s because his father plays golf and his mother is so retarded she doesn’t know what’s coming off anyway, but at least they didn’t mind if their kids used the house. Mine and Lorraine’s we can’t even go to. We couldn’t use the phone at Lorraine’s anyway because her mother doesn’t have unlimited service, and at my house my mother is a disinfectant fanatic. She would have gotten too nervous over all of us using her purified instrument. Another difficulty there is that my father, whom I warmly refer to as Bore, put a lock on our phone—one of those round locks you put in the first dialhole so you can’t dial. He put it on because of a little exchange we had when he called from work.
    “Do you realize I’ve been trying to get your mother for an hour and a half and the line’s been busy?” Bore bellowed.
    “Those things happen. I was talking to a friend.”
    “If you don’t use the phone properly, I’m going to put a lock on it.”
    “Yeah? No kidding?”
    Now it was just the way I said
yeah
that set him off, and that night when he got home, he just put the lock on the phone and didn’t say a word. But I’m used to it. Bore and I have been having a lot of trouble communicating lately as it is, and sometimes I go a little crazy when I feel I’m being picked on or not being trusted. That’s why I finally put airplane glue in the keyhole of the lock so nobody could use the telephone, key or no key.
    Anyway, the idea of the telephone marathon was you had to close your eyes and stick your finger on a number in the directory and then call it up to see how long you could keep whoever answered talking on the phone. I wasn’t too good at this because I used to burst out laughing. The only thing I could do that kept them talking awhile before they hung up was to tell them I was calling from
TV Quiz
and that they had won a prize. That was always good for three and a half minutes before they caught on.
    The longest anyone ever lasted was Dennis, because he picked out this old woman who lived alone and was desperate to talk to anyone. Dennis is really