“The duration of a game of Hi Bob is according to the rules determined by the show, not the vodka,” the Breather said, getting another bottle of vodka from a rack behind the sofa and breaking the seal. The liquor-rack was a glitter of glass and labels in the sun through a gap in the curtains. “The serious Hi Bob player makes it his business never to run out of vodka.”
LaVache drummed idly on his leg with his pen. “Vodka gives Lenore lung-troubles, anyway, as I recall.” He looked at Lenore. “Lenore, baby, sweetheart, how are you? What are you doing here?”
The Breather leaned close to Lenore and told her in a hot sweet whisper, “It’s a Quaalude day, so we all have to be accommodating.”
Lenore looked at LaVache’s lolling head. “Didn’t you get my message? I left this detailed message about how I was coming today. I left it with one of your neighbors, next door, a guy from New Jersey. The college operator connected me to him.”
“Wood, yes,” LaVache said. “He’s actually coming by real soon. He and the leg have an appointment. Yes, I got the message, but why didn’t you just call me?”
“You told Dad you didn’t have a phone, Dad told me.”
“I don’t have a phone. This isn’t a phone, this is a lymph node,” LaVache said, gesturing at a phone next to the television. “I call this a lymph node, not a phone. So when Dad asks me do I have a phone, I can in all good conscience say no. I do, however, have a lymph node.”
“You’re horrible,” said Lenore.
“Hi Bob,” said someone on the screen.
“Zango,” said LaVache, and took a big drink.
“Dead bird, here, A.C.,” Heat said to LaVache.
LaVache detached the clipboard and slid out a drawer in the plastic of his artificial leg and tossed a white new joint to Heat.
“You have a drawer?” said Lenore.
“I’ve had a drawer since high school,” said LaVache. “ I just wear long pants, at home, as a rule. Come on, you knew I had a drawer all the time.”
“No I didn‘t,” said Lenore.
“Crafty girl.”
There was a knock at the outside door.
“Entrez!” Cat yelled.
In came a tall thin guy with glasses and an adam’s apple and a notebook and a baggie.
“Clint Wood,” Heat said from over the bottle, which he was blowing into like a jug, sounding a deep note.
“Guys,” said Clint Wood. “Antichrist.”
“What can we do for you, big guy?” LaVache said, slapping the leg affectionately.
“Introductory Economics. Second quiz. Bonds.”
“Feed the leg,” said LaVache.
LaVache opened the drawer in his leg and Clint Wood put the baggie inside. LaVache slapped the drawer shut and patted it. “Professor?”
“Fursich.”
“All you need to remember for Fursich is, when the interest rate goes up, the price of any bond already issued goes down.”
“Interest rate… up, price… bond… down.” Clint Wood wrote it down.
“And when the rate goes down, the price goes up.”
“Down… up.” Clint Wood looked up. “That’s it?”
“Trust me,” said LaVache.
“What a guy,” said the Breather. “A little Hi Bob, Wood?”
Clint Wood shook his head regretfully. “Can’t. I got class in like ten minutes. I gotta go memorize what the Antichrist told me.” He looked over at Lenore and smiled.
“Well, hey, good luck,” Cat said.
“Thank you very much for taking my message, if you were the person who took my message,” said Lenore.
“Oh, OK, you’re the Antichrist’s sister,” said Clint Wood, sizing Lenore up. “Can’t do enough for the Antichrist, no problem. Thanks again, guys.” He left.
“Hi Bob.”
“Oomph. ”
“This is a deadly one. There’ve been like twenty ‘Hi Bobs’ in this one.”
“What’s the leg got there?”
“Looks to be three j-birds. Poorly rolled.”
“None of you guys have classes?” Lenore asked. Ed McMahon came on the television.
“I have classes,” LaVache said. “I know I do, because it says on my schedule I do.” He cleaned under his fingernail with the corner of his clipboard clasp.
“He’s going to go to a class this semester, he told me,” Heat said to Lenore, doing a handstand in the middle of the floor, so that his shirt fell over his face. “He’s determined to go to at least one class.”
“Well I’m disabled,” LaVache said. “They can’t expect a disabled person to hobble to every faraway, top-of-the-hill class of the semester.”
Lenore looked at LaVache. “You don’t work, here, do you?”
LaVache smiled at her. “That was just work, what I did. I do lots of work.”
“He literally does the work of like forty or fifty guys, and even more girls,” said Heat. “He does all our work, the big lug.”
“What about your own work?” Lenore said to LaVache.
“What can I tell you? I’ve got a leg to support, after all.”
“Dad thinks you work.”
“Surely you of all people didn’t come all the way out here after seeing me only a few weeks ago to tell me what Dad thinks. Or to find out what I think and do and then scuttle back to Dad.”
“Not exactly,” Lenore said, shifting because her suitcase handle was digging into her bottom. “There’s stuff we need to talk about, that’s sort of come up.” She looked around at Cat, Heat, and the Breather.
“Well goody. Stuff.” LaVache looked back at the television. “We have a game of Hi Bob to finish, and then there’s an episode of ‘The Munsters’ on Channel 22 I particularly want to see, and then we can go conversationally wild.”
“He’ll be asleep by then, though, I predict,” the Breather whispered into Lenore’s ear as his elbow brushed her chest.
“Hi Bob,” said Bill Dailey, the character Howard Borden, on the screen.
“Death, big time,” said LaVache, looking at Cat and the nearly full bottle of vodka on the floor in front of him. “See you tomorrow, Cat.”
“A l‘enfer, ” Cat muttered. He began sucking on the bottle. He had to stop almost immediately.
“You’ve got five minutes to finish that,” LaVache said to Cat.
“He’s going to be really sick,” said Lenore.
“We don’t get sick here anymore,” said LaVache. “This Amherst guy, this legendary guy a few years back started this tradition where, instead of getting sick, we pound our heads against the wall.”
“You pound your heads?”
“Really hard.”
“I see.”
The phone rang. “Breather, you want to get the lymph node?” LaVache said, returning to writing on his clipboard. The Breather stepped over Cat, who was crawling on the gray carpet, and got the phone. The Antichrist was writing something.
“Antichrist, it’s Snadgener,” the Breather said after a bit, putting his hand over the phone. “Evolution as Cultural Phenomenon Paper Number One. Were Darwin’s critics right about the theory of natural selection being deeply dangerous to Christianity.”
“Tell Snadge the leg is wondering what he has for it,” said LaVache.
“Mushrooms, he says.”
“Professor?”
“Summerville.”
“Tell Snadge the interesting answer for Summerville is yes,” LaVache said. The Breather whispered into the phone. LaVache continued, “After the Origin, the Bible has to retreat, he thinks. The Bible ceases to be a historical record of actual events and instead becomes a piece of moral fiction, useful only as a guide for making decisions about how to live. No longer purporting to tell what was and is, but only what ought to be.” LaVache opened his eyes. “Summerville’ll lap it up.”
The Breather talked into the phone. Cat had a third of the bottle to go and was green and moist. Heat sat cross-legged with the joint on the sofa.