Gisela, Uwe's third wife, gazed lovingly at his prize-winning beard. It was she who was responsible for entering him in the "Middle- Aged Austrian with Facial Hair" contest. In spite of his defeatist nature and loathing of competition, she convinced him it was the right thing to do. But was it really? Uwe was beginning to have doubts...
Poppy said this morning this was the coldest day on the Mississippi books but that now seem so long ago and now he is dead and I am dog-tired and can't run a step more on my raw and bloodied feet so I just dropped here beside this old willow, while the mad dogs trail my scent, and scribble the reason I now beg y'all to pray for my soul and confess to you, Reverend Town, that before any of this happened to Poppy and me, yes, you right, I swear to Gawd I was an atheist.
"But really, Bartholomew" laughed Lady Zinnia with her characteristic throaty chuckle, "You can't be serious! Lady Thanninger, with that dashing young... oh, no, it can't be. He's simply too common for someone of her station!"
"I'm afraid it's true, Madam. Lady Thanninger and her gentleman friend are waiting in the foyer. Shall I show them in?"
"Very well." The chuckle was replaced by bitter disapproval. How dare Lady Thanninger bring a commoner into her home. Everyone in the community knew what he was after-her money. Yes, he was young and handsome with his jet black hair and piercing green eyes, but Lady Thanninger should know better than to stray from her kind. "She'll be dead on their honeymoon night," Lady Zinnia mummbled to herself as her visitors walked through the door.
Beverly, huddled under the bleachers, sniffed back a tear. Kicked off the cheerleading squad! All of her mother's dreams for her, dashed! How could she even go home now?
Bev needed a drink. She knew good girls didn't partake in spirits, but she also knew she wasn't a good girl so that axiom didn't apply to her. As she absentmindedly fingered the cigarette-butt laden dirt around her, she though of going down to the Stop&Go on Marshall Street to score some booze. No, she thought, Merv the Perv was working tonight. Although she really wanted a drink, her feet were tired from cheerleader tryouts and she didn't think she could raise them above her head, even for the two and a half minutes Merv required as payment for a bottle of Old Harper. Bev lifted her dirty hands for her face, to wipe the tears - BEER!. She sniffed her fingers again, taking in the sweet smell of Old Milwaukee. The dirt under the bleachers was soaked with beer, spilled from drunken fans of the previous night's Junior Varsity Game. She had a disgusting thought and then thought of facing her mother sober. The disgusting thought won out and Bev began to scoop handfuls of dirt, saturated with Wisconson Wine, into her lipstick-smeared mouth, pausing briefly only to extract errant Kool and Camel butts. As she chewed the earth, she thought about Sally Cummings, the spaz that beat her, took her rightful place on the squad. Obviously, Bev knew what had to be done, and made a mental note to give Uncle Chuck a call. Bev knew the "what" but old Uncle Chuck was a master of the "how". As she scooped up more dirt, spitting out pebbles and bottle caps, she realized she was actually getting buzzed. Beverly Manson, wanna-be cheerleader at Spiro Agnew High, began to laugh.
Bev staggered to her feet and, unaware of just how drunk she was, piled into one of the supporting columns for the bleachers, bonked herself in the forehead rather badly, and knocked herself out. When she regained consciousness, she was aware of how badly her head hurt, the trickle of blood seeping from her forehead which probably meant she wouldn't make the homecoming queen's court (not that she really wanted to, but it was the principle of the thing), the fact that someone in authority from Spiro Agnew High might have seen her which meant she'd get detention again (and have to cope with the principal's thing), and a semi-filled bottle of Colt 45 Malt Liquor lying just beyond her grasp. As the light from the streetlight glinted off the bottle, it tantalized her with the tangy taste and bodacious buzz that she craved more than she craved, for instance, another navel ring or another tattoo or a whole box of Hostess Twinkies (her secret vice and favorite breakfast on school mornings). She crawled toward the bottle, not caring that she was trashing the front of her cheerleader uniform which she was supposed to return on Monday (Actually she was supposed to return the whole uniform, not just the front, but it was the front she was trashing because whoever heard of crawling on your back, for goodness sakes!). As the bottle was within her grasp, she naturally grasped it, breaking her favorite Lee Press-On nail in the process (the middle finger one), and almost cursed except that she was struck dumb by what happened next.
Out of the bottle floated a genie with light brown hair, who said, "You have released me from my prison, my child. I will grant you two wishes." "I wish you'd tell me why I don't get the regulation three wishes!" demanded Bev, who might be drunk but who was still one sharp cookie.
"You're thinking of Aladdin's lamp," sneered the genie. "Times are tough for us beer bottle genies. Does that answer your wish? Now you have one wish left. Think about it while I go look for a restroom. Living in beer all these years really gets to a guy."
As the genie floated around behind the bleachers, Bev was tempted to tell him off in the smart-ass way kids have these days when she realized that this guy's help might be really valuable.
I had seen broads like Gia Gondola before - Miami's full of 'em. But when a broad constructed of nothing but legs, attitude and a wide-brimmed hat stalks into your office unannounced and drops a baby alligator on your desk, you sit up and take notice. The thing is that baby alligators have a horrible habit of using your waste basket as the center ring for a cosmic circus. I was pondering this, while quickly extricating myself from behind my equipaje-to-be leaden desk, when I noticed a burgundy ball of manufactured glass rolling around the brim of Ms. Gondola's hat. Backwards it would roll, as she opened her mouth to speak, then forward again with every hard sylable. These words, sliding from her mouth in a very distracting Italian accent, evaded my comprehension, as I backed up against my file cabinet. She, who until this time had kept her eyes focused upon the alligator, brought her gaze to meet mine as she noticed the sound of my body thudding against the thin metal of the cabinet. Her voice stopped, while the marble on her hat finally dropped to the floor, and I was suddenly enthralled by a massive glob of mascara that clung to one of her femininely long eye lashes. I thought to myself that I would love nothing better than to build a summer home there upon that glistening mass of comercial grade cosmetic and spend my August months crafting alligator skin shoes because this job sucks.
The author comments, "I am made of snow."
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