Read Online Kill Two Birds & Get Stoned by Kinky Friedman - Free Book Online
Authors: Kinky Friedman
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many years. Nothing wrong with that, I thought. Everything right. The face was gone, of course. Like all faces in the windows of our lives, it didn't hang around long enough for me to become accustomed to it. And now I wasn't even sure I'd seen it in the first place.
At that time in my life, perhaps understandably enough, I did not have a great many friends. People do not like to hang around with a writer who doesn't write, and the unfortunate soul himself does not much enjoy hanging around people. If he can just avoid hanging himself, he figures he'll be slightly ahead of the game. What I'm saying is that the face in the window, if it had been there at all, and if it didn't belong to the swarthy, crepuscular body of a traveling psycho, must have belonged to either Clyde or Fox and I much preferred that it belonged to Clyde. Yet I did not think that Clyde lived anywhere near the Village. I at first had refrained from pointedly asking where she lived because, I suppose, I did not want to hear that she and Fox were living together. I knew from what she'd told me at the bank that he was her "roommate," but that could mean a lot of things. Maybe she'd met him in his homeless days and literally taken him off the street out of the kindness of her heart, and I believed there was a great deal of kindness in her heart. Now that I knew her better, I still hadn't pursued the nature of their relationship with her because I could never get her away from Fox. Basically, it would have pained me more than I would have liked to have admitted, though it wouldn't have surprised me, to have discovered that they were lovers.
Many thoughts can go through your mind in the brief time it takes to walk out a door and look for a face that isn't there anymore. I found myself hoping that the face had been Clyde's and that she'd now be waiting at my doorstep. This, of course, did not happen. In fact, nothing happened. Well, almost nothing. No one was out there. My author's eye for detail did, however, observe a fat orange cat walking away, toward Seventh Avenue. There was one other thing out of the ordinary. Between the two garbage cans, on the ground directly in front of my window, lay a single red rose.
If the cat hadn't placed it there, then it must have been Clyde, I figured. It is enough to say that I hoped very much that it was Clyde. I took the rose inside and put it on my desk next to my typewriter in a coffee mug filled with water. It smelled of ice cream and perfume and sadness, and I knew that in time, like everything else in this nonfiction world, it, too, would disappear.
nine
The next morning, at ten-thirty as planned, I waited on a street corner adjacent to Bellevue for my two partners in crime to arrive. Clyde surprised me by showing up only twenty minutes late. She was alone and looking beautiful and she put her hands on both sides of my face and kissed me very slowly and very softly on the mouth.
"I love a man who's punctual," she said. "You're the only one in the family who does what he says he'll do when he says he'll do it."
"I would have shown up even earlier if I'd known I was going to get a kiss like that."
"You're sweet, Walter," she said. "You're sweet, and I haven't been perfectly straight with you. Of course, I haven't been perfectly straight with anybody about anything for as long as I can remember."
"Maybe that's part of your charm."
"Maybe. But it's also a burden. Soon, Sunshine. Soon you'll know everything."
"When is soon?" I asked.
"When you finish the book."
"So it was you last night. At my window. You left the rose."
"It could've been me," she said. "But for now let's just say it fell off a rose truck and took a lucky roll. But I'm so glad you're one of us, Walter. We need you. I need you. You're practical. You're reliable. You're responsible."
"Yes," I said. "But I'm learning."
Clyde was starting to say something when a vision in blue popped out of the subway and came striding rapidly toward us. Fox, with
At that time in my life, perhaps understandably enough, I did not have a great many friends. People do not like to hang around with a writer who doesn't write, and the unfortunate soul himself does not much enjoy hanging around people. If he can just avoid hanging himself, he figures he'll be slightly ahead of the game. What I'm saying is that the face in the window, if it had been there at all, and if it didn't belong to the swarthy, crepuscular body of a traveling psycho, must have belonged to either Clyde or Fox and I much preferred that it belonged to Clyde. Yet I did not think that Clyde lived anywhere near the Village. I at first had refrained from pointedly asking where she lived because, I suppose, I did not want to hear that she and Fox were living together. I knew from what she'd told me at the bank that he was her "roommate," but that could mean a lot of things. Maybe she'd met him in his homeless days and literally taken him off the street out of the kindness of her heart, and I believed there was a great deal of kindness in her heart. Now that I knew her better, I still hadn't pursued the nature of their relationship with her because I could never get her away from Fox. Basically, it would have pained me more than I would have liked to have admitted, though it wouldn't have surprised me, to have discovered that they were lovers.
Many thoughts can go through your mind in the brief time it takes to walk out a door and look for a face that isn't there anymore. I found myself hoping that the face had been Clyde's and that she'd now be waiting at my doorstep. This, of course, did not happen. In fact, nothing happened. Well, almost nothing. No one was out there. My author's eye for detail did, however, observe a fat orange cat walking away, toward Seventh Avenue. There was one other thing out of the ordinary. Between the two garbage cans, on the ground directly in front of my window, lay a single red rose.
If the cat hadn't placed it there, then it must have been Clyde, I figured. It is enough to say that I hoped very much that it was Clyde. I took the rose inside and put it on my desk next to my typewriter in a coffee mug filled with water. It smelled of ice cream and perfume and sadness, and I knew that in time, like everything else in this nonfiction world, it, too, would disappear.
nine
The next morning, at ten-thirty as planned, I waited on a street corner adjacent to Bellevue for my two partners in crime to arrive. Clyde surprised me by showing up only twenty minutes late. She was alone and looking beautiful and she put her hands on both sides of my face and kissed me very slowly and very softly on the mouth.
"I love a man who's punctual," she said. "You're the only one in the family who does what he says he'll do when he says he'll do it."
"I would have shown up even earlier if I'd known I was going to get a kiss like that."
"You're sweet, Walter," she said. "You're sweet, and I haven't been perfectly straight with you. Of course, I haven't been perfectly straight with anybody about anything for as long as I can remember."
"Maybe that's part of your charm."
"Maybe. But it's also a burden. Soon, Sunshine. Soon you'll know everything."
"When is soon?" I asked.
"When you finish the book."
"So it was you last night. At my window. You left the rose."
"It could've been me," she said. "But for now let's just say it fell off a rose truck and took a lucky roll. But I'm so glad you're one of us, Walter. We need you. I need you. You're practical. You're reliable. You're responsible."
"Yes," I said. "But I'm learning."
Clyde was starting to say something when a vision in blue popped out of the subway and came striding rapidly toward us. Fox, with
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