Read Online Cardinal Numbers: Stories by Hob Broun - Free Book Online

American Conversation.” He still carries a specimen in his wallet, #18 in a series of 50.
The Blizzard Of ’88 … Only two men had ventured thru the driving snow and wind to partake of their customerry noon repast at The Murray Hill Chop House. These stanch men, Scanlon, a hotelier, and Shapiro, a tunesmith, sat in complete silence until the fowl was served, Capon With Currant Sauce.
    Shapiro: Nothing goes straight to the heart like good food.
    Scanlon: I never met a man to say no.
    Shapiro: Not for all the rice in China.
    HERE is Dodie at the hatcheck stand, singing to herself about honeysuckle vines and tall sugar pines. She walks to work 37 blocks from her flat on Terpsichore Street. There her drapes are festive with donkeys and watermelons embroydered on. She has a closetful of shoes. Dodie collects footwear of all kinds. And who doesn’t tell she looks like Betty Hutton—everybody’s Jitterbugging Daughter, ooo yess, and the girl who made the Miracle At Morgan’s Creek.
    HERE is the band at a long table in the Onyx kitchen. They are eating elk wieners and kraut, drinking ale. Guido (C-Melody Sax) says he is the only person to ever go broke on Florida Real Estate. A kid making roux for the Gumbo burns himself bad.
    ONLY one customer at the bar, Chick Lazslo, the City Hall Reporter. He’s been snooping for scandle all day, and no luck. He’s drinking rock-and-rye doubles, and pretending to be in Afrika. Over the backbar there’s a desert landscape, lozenge shapes and minarets under a red sun, basic-ly. Like the artist got swacked on a carton of Camels.
    HERE’S this gnarly Cop poking his nitestick into the big man sleeping on a bench at the RR station. The big man rubs his black face and sits up. His clawhammer coat is torn and his shoes are somewhere else. He rubs his great low-thumbed meathooks together and smiles. This is Snuffy Howe, the Bar Harbor scion and range pistol champ. Snuffy Howe is a Gorilla.
    JANUARY , ’26, and the Turley Howes are returned from their Afrikan rubber plantation to the castle overlooking the textile mills on the river. It has been snowing furtively for days, and it looks like Connecticut or Michigan or Pennsylvania from the window of a bus. Dr. Livesy, a GP of the very first water, sexologist, fly fisherman, and Ambassador-To-Be, wears his pince-nez on a ribbon. He calls for boiling vinegar and arranges instruments on a tray, chaynsmoking as he works. After the long delivery, they read the papers and don’t say a thing. Mrs. Howe stops crying and hangs herself.
    HERE is the hexagonal brass check Snuffy receives in exchange for his Borsalino. Dodie looks into his sunken black eyes. He tells her they could be First in History to be married underwater. How’s about Chesapeake Bay? Dodie says, well, anyway, you look durable enough. And the way she says it is so offhand, like she’s home frying up some cutlets and a little cigarette ash falls in the pan.
    BETWEEN sets Doghouse Riley (Bass Fiddle) creeps into the pantry to glom some reefer. The only thing he can smell is sacked onions. Doghouse is thinking with his voice he ought to throw over this nowhere gig and move into radio. He experiments with some intros: From the Fabulous Assagai Room … Vulcan Tire Radio Breaks in With the News!
    RIGHT behind him, between the onions and the wall, Dodie’s satin heels are hooked over the furred Howe shoulders on which the future of a Dynasty rests. She says in his ear: I’ve never had anybody like you. And no Sweet Talk here, but a matter of fact. Like she’s telling her butcher to trim off the fat.
    HERE is the enormous Solaryum of Marmalade Hospital, an aroma of moss, a canopy of fronds. Dr. Livesy, still sharp in his 90’s (he is allowed to treat himself), arrives for an interview with Mr. Lazslo of The Bugle. Absolutely, son, always a head for figures. Could have been Mr. Memory in the Vaudeville. Reciting imagined names and addresses, false bank account numbers, he rolls the gift