Chump Change by David Eddie Read Free Book Online

you sit there like a stump? Open your ears! I said, ‘The legendary Leslie Lawson wants
you.’”
    “I understand, Max, I understand! I need time to think! Why is there never any time to think in this life? Nothing happens for months and years, you fall into a stupor. Then, bam, bam, bam, you have to make 50 decisions, all at once. Why is that?”
    Max looks at me quizzically.
    “Relax, Dave. What’s to decide? Just go with the flow.”
    As we drive along, Max fills me in on various mutual friends and acquaintances, what they’ve been up to, who they’re going out with. To my Manhattanized sensibilities, his way of speaking about people is quaint, charming, antiquated. He speaks of their “characters,” their hobbies, their preferences. So-and-so has taken up cooking, so-and-so is no longer with so-and-so. Cut to the chase, pal, I want to say to him. What do they do, how much do they make, what do they pay for their apartments? Those are
characteristics
. We’ll get to all this other mumbo-jumbo later.
    Then I thought: easy, Dave, take it easy. You’re home now, back in good old Canada. You can relax.
    Eventually, we “broke the seal” and had to pull over to the side of the road. With burning bladders, we scampered across the ditch to a little wooded area, stood against two trees.
    What a relief. It’s great to be back, I thought, drinking in the cool, pine-scented breeze. Back in the bosom of real friends, surrounded by nature, a frisson of romance (sex) in the air. I felt … a bit like Australopithecus unfrozen from a block of ice: a little stiff, perhaps, a little rank, but hairy, hot-blooded, organic.
    Alive, in other words.

5

Darlington
    Sam and Les are standing on the porch when we pull into the drive, gravel crunching under our wheels. They’re quite a sight: two women with hair the colour of wheat, standing in the halo of a porch light, on the verandah of an old stone farmhouse.
    We clamber out of the car. Max hugs Sam, then Les. Les hugs Max, then me. What a hug. At one point on the drive up, Max described Les as “somatatonic.” I’ve since looked this word up only to discover it doesn’t exist, except in Max’s imagination. I understood what he meant, though: she’s physical, her body has a mind of its own, like a stegosaurus’s tail. I remember once, at a party in Montreal, she was talking to someone else, but her ass was rubbing against me, clenching my leg like a demented mole. Her ass was flirting with me,
unbeknownst to Les,
I believe. Now, while she breathes “Nice to see you again, Dave,” hotly in my ear, her body frisks me, her breasts do figure-8s on my chest, her thighs seem to entwine around mine. I have to push her away, ever so gently, lest she detect the burgeoning tumescence she’s inspiring.
    “Nice to see you, too, Les,” I say.
    “You smell like a brewery,” she says, though not in an unkindly way, I think. “A brewery on the second floor above a distillery.”
    “Let’s go inside,” Max says.
    Inside, changed, washed, drinks in hand, we’re sitting around a popping, hissing fire, chatting.
    I like to think I retain some of my anti-materialist values, however, I have to admit at this moment I’m experiencing an intense bourgeois covetousness for the room I’m sitting in, old man Lawson’s study, his
sanctum sanctorum
, a.k.a “the library.” Wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling books, a huge French window leading to a wrought-iron balcony, giant stone fireplace, antique rolltop upon which perches the latest in laptop technology. What couldn’t a man accomplish, I think, in a room like this? And it’s not only a library/study, it’s also a bar. In fact, it’s one of the most comprehensive private bars I’ve seen, with every conceivable kind of booze, including an excellent selection of single malts, plus all the fixins and mixins: ice bucket, tongs, fridge, tonic, soda, lime, ice, Angostura bitters, Worcestershire sauce, horseradish, etc. According to Max,