"DiChario-Drainage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dichario Nicholas A)

NICHOLAS A. DICHARIO

DRAINAGE

DELSEY SLOUCHED OVER HIS kitchen table and fingered through a stack of bills,
receipts, vouchers, bank statements, and deposit slips. The dreaded shoe box.
This year's tax season would come and go without Ellen, and he was fully
prepared to mishandle his finances with the same finesse he'd mishandled his
marriage.

Cid, tinkering with a crescent wrench in front of the kitchen sink, chuckled
under his breath. Delsey ignored him, unfolding an old rejection slip from the
New Yorker. So much for his sonnet. He would remain an unpublished poet for yet
another fiscal year. It was a bitter little poem anyway, a versification of an
ugly divorce, complete with custody arrangements, unscrupulous lawyers, and
shameless self-pity.

"Hear about the Bronx Bank Robber?" Cid said, leaning over Delsey's garbage
disposal and deftly snatching a Stanley screwdriver from the Black & Decker
mini-tool-tote on the kitchen counter. "Here's a guy, in ten minutes, who robs a
bank in Flatbush and then he hits a bank in Beechhurst. How does the guy get all
the way from Flatbush to Beechhurst and pull two bank jobs in ten minutes?
Impossible, right? Well get this. Both bank cameras get photos of the same guy--
the same guy. But the best part is-- are you ready for this? -- some Catholic
priest runs this flophouse in the South Bronx swears the guy was sleeping off a
drank and never left his bed."

Delsey scoffed. "Great journalism from the supermarket checkout line."

"Pick up some interesting tidbits if you're willing to weed through the
Hollywood gossip." Cid pointed the butt of his screwdriver at Delsey. "Did you
know that human females are the only species on Earth who experience pain while
delivering their babies? It's the evolution of the human skull. Our brains have
developed so fast, see, and the pelvis can't get any bigger without screwing up
how women walk. I believe our next great evolutionary advancement will be some
kind of whacky gestalten outgrowth of the body and the beaner." He tapped his
forehead with the Stanley.

Delsey picked up the latest issue of Rock Disc magazine and searched for his
name in the contents: D.T. Furphy, Freelance Critic. (The "T" was for Townshend.
He'd added it in 1968, in an unsuccessful attempt to confuse Selective Service.)
Nothing in this issue, nothing in the last issue, and at this rate nothing in
the next. Critic's block.

Thank God for Ellen's child support.

Cid hunkered over the sink, beating down on his screwdriver. "I've been known to
file some pretty mean tax returns in my day. Be glad to help you out."