Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man by Lawrence Block Page B

waited until we were through, not that we came happily. Although we did, but it would have been a more awkward construction that way. I’m pointing this out primarily for Steve’s benefit, Fran, so that he can learn to develop more of an ear for narrative. If he’s going to insist on sending me a thousand words when a simple photograph would suffice, it would be best if he learned to arrange them in the proper order.)
    They came like Greeks, bringing me little presents. While none of their gifts matched what Merry Cat had brought me, I was grateful for the two containers of cardboard coffee, the grilled-cheese-and-bacon sandwich, the socks and underwear.
    “I couldn’t remember whether you wore jockey shorts or boxer shorts,” Alison said, blue eyes sparkling and plump cheeks glowing. “But Naughty Nasty Nancy remembered.”
    “Hardly the sort of thing she’d forget,” B.J. said.
    “Meow,” said Nancy Hall. She was still wearing the witch’s hat, and mordant madness danced in her eyes. “Meow, meow, meow. Look at Merry Cat, she’s positively radiant. Orgasm brings the most beatific look to her face. Are you in a state of grace, Marry Katherine?”
    “Sure, and don’t I half feel sinfully saintlike,” Merry Cat said.
    “Sister Theresa talks like that. Do her some more, Merry Cat.”
    “Faith, and am I not a fair candidate for canonization, with the Spirit of the Holy Name running down my leg.”
    “I think that’s blasphemous,” Dawn Redmond said.
    “Sure and you’re nothing but jealous, Dawn me love.”
    “Oh, shut up and kiss me, Merry Cat,” Dawn said.
    They kissed and went into a clinch. Merry Cat and I had our clothes on again. The rest of the girls and I were sitting on the bed or leaning against the wall, and Dawn and Merry Cat were standing up in the middle of the room with their arms around each other and their tongues in each other’s mouth. We all watched for a while, and Naughty Nasty Nancy kissed B.J. on the neck and touched her breasts, and Alison petted Naughty Nasty Nancy gently on the bottom, and Ellen Jamison cuddled beside me on the bed and opened her mouth so wide for my kiss that the braces didn’t get in the way. And eventually Dawn and Merry Cat let go of each other, and they both had a glassy look in their eyes, and Dawn said, “Well, at least Larry hasn’t spoiled you for me, Merry Cat. I guess I still can turn you on.”
    “Till the day I die, Dawn.”
    “Isn’t it nice,” said Ellen to me, “that we all love each other so truly?”
    There’s not really much to add to this. It’s not as if I felt compelled to burden you with a blow-by-blow description of my life without you, anyway. I just wanted to put you in the picture, so to speak, and it seems to have taken me several thousand words to do it.
    That’s a really terrible school, incidentally. They have all of these seventeenth-century rules administered by a batch of desiccated nuns who spend most of their time remembering the good old days with Torquemada. My six little daughters of Lancaster seem to be the six really fine girls in the school. As B.J. put it, “We’re really alone here. Nobody else drinks and nobody else smokes and nobody else turns on and nobody else fucks. There are some lesbians, but they’re hopeless. All so sickeningly sincere about it. When they’re not eating each other, they’re praying over it. You could really vomit, honestly.”
    Fortunately, these six have parental permission to sign out for overnights with mythical New York aunts and uncles. That afternoon B.J. and Alison signed out, and Merry Cat drove us to the station, and we rode into Grand Central on the New Haven. We just kept talking about things. Total rapport. I can understand how exciting it must be for you and Steve. There was a phrase in his letter about the words in popular songs being endowed with personal meaning when you’re in love. I haven’t put it as well as he did, of course, but I know what he means. I