Ten Little New Yorkers by Kinky Friedman Page A

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    â€œLet’s see. Is it Judge Crater’s wallet? Is it Frederick Exley’s wallet? Is it Jesus Christ’s wallet? Uh, Richard Milhous Nixon’s wallet?”
    â€œOh, no, no, my dear Watson! How very witty of you! They’ve all no doubt been in my loft at one time or another, I feel certain. But none of them, my dear friend, happens to be the party that left his wallet at the—uh—party. That would be someone who, I’m given to believe, had twenty-four hours to live. Or rather, as some might sensationalize the matter, to die.”
    â€œWhat?” said McGovern sharply.
    â€œThat’s right, Watson. The wallet in my loft belonged to good ol’ Bob Scalopini. The late Bob Scalopini, if I’m not mistaken.”
    Now, of course, it was McGovern’s turn to swallow his cigar, except for the fact he didn’t smoke cigars. Maybe he would inhale a large, well-twisted joint or an entire Vodka McGovern or those fucking cookies he was incessantly baking. At any rate he must have inhaled something because he didn’t speak for a very long while. When I at last heard his voice again, it had an entirely different-sounding resonance. McGovern, a journalist to the core, apparently felt he had a scoop.
    â€œThis is unbelievable!” he shouted. “It’s a goddamn bird’s nest on the ground! And you don’t remember which one was Scalopini?”
    â€œOf course not, McGovern. I wasn’t the one who brought them over to my loft.”
    â€œThat’s right. But he was definitely there?”
    â€œAfter applying my methods of deductive reasoning to the known facts in this matter, I must concur, Watson, with your invariably brilliant conclusion.”
    â€œOkay, this is great! This is a gift! I’ve got to get started.”
    â€œWatson, life is a gift. Death is a gift. Friendship can even be a gift—”
    By this time, however, in his journalistic zeal to follow a hot story, McGovern had already cradled the blower. I could imagine him with his trusty little newspaper reporter’s notebook in his hand, burning up the wires, legging it out the door, and always, always, asking an infinite stream of questions, which, of course, led inexorably to further questions and sometimes, possibly, some answers. That’s what we all were looking for, of course. Answers. In puzzles. In people. In life. That’s why we buy newspapers, why we play the jukebox, why we climb tall mountains, why we squint at a bleb of walrus semen through a microscope, why we go to New York, why we come back to Texas.
    Twenty-four hours to die, I thought. That might be more than most of us needed.

Twelve
    T he next few days on the ranch were filled with activity. The boys and girls who thronged the little green valley of summertime were gone, of course. So were the hummingbirds. But the three donkeys, Roy, Gabby, and Little Jewford, came by the lodge to visit rather often, always provoking an explosion of barking and excitement on the part of the Friedmans. I kept the fire in the old fireplace burning twenty-four hours a day. To paraphrase Earl Buck-elew, I burned wood like a widow woman. I had a good reason for doing so. In my soul I could feel the warmth of the world slipping away.
    How could people live, I wondered, without a fire burning brightly in the fireplace? How could they live in an empty loft without a cat dumping vindictively about the floor, or a lesbian dance class pounding relentlessly on the ceiling? How could people live anywhere in this world without Cuban cigars or Kona coffee? How, indeed, could they live at all? I didn’t have any answers, but then I didn’t have all that many questions either. Most of the time I seemed to just watch the fire, as men had done for thousands of years, all in the twinkle of an eye.
    The days passed. Two of them to be exact. I was sitting in the comfortable chair by the fire that Perky and I fought over