Read Online Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! by M. E. Kerr - Free Book Online

was preparing to carry in the trays of food.
    “P. John,” she said, “if you’re going to join in the discussion period, remember to be kind. You know nothing at all about Rebirth Therapy. If you can’t be kind, be silent.”
    “I have nothing to discuss with them,” P. John said. “My outlook on life is light years away from their outlook on life.”
    “You don’t know anything about their outlook on life, either,” she said.
    “I know enough about their outlook to keep my money in my sock,” said P. John.
    “How nice to see you again, Tucker,” Mrs. Hocker said, turning her back on P. John. “You’re being so good about paying attention to Natalia.”
    “Maybe he just wants to pay attention to her,” P. John said.
    “I do,” Tucker said.
    “P. John,” Mrs. Hocker said, “you’re a very brash young man. You do test people’s patience.”
    “I just say what I think, Ma’am.”
    “I hope Dinky doesn’t pick up that habit,” Mrs. Hocker said. “It’s not a very attractive habit for a young person.”
    “Dinky’s not a very attractive name for a young person,” said P. John.
    Mrs. Hocker didn’t answer. She was getting ice trays from the refrigerator.
    When her hands were full, she suddenly whirled around and kicked the door shut like a punter going for pigskin, with such force the glasses on the kitchen shelves shook.
    There was so much noise and movement in the front of the house that Nader hid under the bed in Dinky’s room.
    Tucker went back to see her, after trying and failing to make conversation with Natalia. When Tucker last saw Natalia she was cornered by Marcus, who was shoveling down egg-salad sandwiches and reminiscing fondly about the highs he used to get on heroin before he was rehabilitated. Marcus would punctuate every paragraph with, “But don’t get me wrong, man, my head was messed up.”
    Maybe it was Tucker’s imagination, but Nader looked thinner, and seemed to have back some of her old energy.
    Dinky definitely looked thinner, and Tucker had noticed another change in her. When he had passed her the photostat of the newspaper clipping about the four-year-old baby who ate her mother’s hormone cream and grew breasts, Dinky read it expressionlessly.
    Then Dinky said to him, “I’m not interested in the bizarre anymore.”
    “How come?”
    “I’ve got to think about myself. I’ve got to concentrate on getting off all this blubber.”
    “Can’t you do both?” Tucker asked.
    “I’ve got to read more,” Dinky answered. “P. John has read all of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., except a few stories in Welcome to the Monkey House .”
    “I only read God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater ,” Tucker said. “But I wouldn’t think P. John would like Vonnegut.”
    “He likes him because he’s a self-made man,” Dinky said. “He says you’d never find Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., on welfare.”
    After Tucker had petted Nader for a while and listened to a little of a new record album, he saw Natalia standing in the doorway. She had her old mischievous grin on her face, and her hands were behind her back.
    “Come on in,” Tucker said. “How’s the discussion going?”
    Natalia made a face. Then she produced a spiral notebook folded open to a page, with a balloon drawn on it.
    Inside the balloon were the words “If I could be reborn, I’d be a—”
    Tucker picked up a pencil and finished the sentence, “Aries instead of a Pisces, because Pisces are wishy-washy and Aries are dynamic.”
    “I’d be a Gemini, instead of a Libra,” Natalia said, “because Geminis have two ways of looking at things.”
    “That makes them two-faced,” Tucker said.
    “No, it doesn’t,” Natalia said, “because they’re not really one person. They’re twins in one person.”
    “I don’t know much about astrology,” Tucker said, “just that Pisces are wishy-washy and Aries are dynamic. My mother’s Aries. She has a really good mind.” He felt relieved because they were actually beginning a