Fun With Problems by Robert Stone Read Free Book Online Page A

antiques along New York Route 22. Arriving, Margaret had found her friend, who was seriously bipolar, in a state approaching raving mania. To punish her, Margaret had taken Kimmie's battered '65 Ford Mustang and driven it to D.C. in partial payment to the Smiling Lascar.
    "At the station? But I'm stranded. I'm marooned, you see, and I can't..."
    "It's autumn break, Kimmie. You don't need to go anywhere." In the end, she had simply to insist. Kimmie had forgotten about the loan as a result of her medication. Or of not taking it. Or something. After a while she pressed the red button on Kimmie and switched the phone off. Then she checked on young Jim and went to bed.

    It was midmorning when Cordelia and Slash arrived. Margaret looked them over in their bib overalls and work shirts. Cordelia's getup fit badly. She wore a Depression-style gray tweed cap turned backward.
    "You're late. I hope you brought everything?" Then she performed a stylized double take. "By the way, your mustache is rat-like," she told Donny. "What have you done to it?"
    Donny Slash, who had come in wearing a suave, cheery
smile, lost his composure. He was always trying to impress Margaret favorably. But Margaret's secret attraction to him was a gratuitous grace over which he had no control at all.

    "Whattya mean, Slim?"
    "Never mind."
    Cordelia giggled. The twisted relationship between her mother and Slash amused her.
    "I've identified this awful man," Margaret explained. She meant she had acquired bits and pieces of the Bowers' life and documents from an addicted antiques runner who had become aware of Mrs. Bower's collection. The man saw the Bowers regularly at auctions. On the day after Margaret's return from Kimmie's, the runner had spotted Bower at the museum and called her. Although Margaret had actually been a psychiatrist, her name was not Cerwin.
    "By the way, Cordy, are you whacked, my darling?" She turned on Donny, who fidgeted and blinked under Margaret's fierce glance. Blinking was his shot at showing an honest countenance.
    "Fuck no!" Cordelia said.
    "Fuck no? Because your lips are purple. And your friend!" She addressed Donny with a humorless smile. "You're whacked also. And you smell of beer. You're drunk. You've both been up all night slamming crystal. God bless us and save us!"
    "No, man," said Donny. "We're cool. We're down."
    "Cool? How cool you're cool, you moron!"
    "Hey, Slim, man," Donny said, repentant, "it's all good."
    "Do you know what this means?" Margaret asked. "It means we'll have to call Desirée." Desirée was a Haitian girl who often minded the baby. "I'll have to cancel the Lascar. I'll have to expose my posterior on the open road. You can't drive." She turned on Cordelia. "Cordy can't drive. She has warrants. Oh, God," she moaned, "the two of you."

    "Don't let her come!" Cordelia implored Donny. "It's such a drag when she comes."
    "Yeah, sure," Slash said.
    "Well, it is," said Cordelia savagely. "Mother." She pronounced the word with the irony of the street.
    "Shame on you," Margaret said. "And take off that stupid hat."
    It was close to noon when they arrived in Calverton and parked on the road a few yards up from the Bowers' house. Margaret looked as chic as a middle-aged woman in white coveralls ever could, but she was annoyed at the delays.
    "Check it out."
    Slash started out of the truck.
    "Not you," Margaret told him. "Cordy."
    Cordy returned to say that the coast was clear.
    "No system?" Slash asked.
    Margaret laughed bitterly, snorted. "He didn't set it. People like him often don't."
    They drove up to the house.
    "Even if they'd set the system," said Donny, "I coulda disarmed it."
    "Yes, you're wonderful, Slash," Margaret said. She addressed him as Slash only to torment him. "Now check the weathervane." She indicated the metal instrument on the roof. It had the form of a killer whale and was handsomely wrought.
    "Nice," said Donny.

    "Nice. So can you?"
    "Sort of a hassle. But yeah." He turned and looked