"I thought I told you not to interrupt my stories," Bobby said.
"Stories like yours hellip;"
"Be quiet," he said.
He spoke the words very softly.
Larry looked at him.
"Do you understand?" he said. "When I'm telling a story, be quiet."
Larry looked into his eyes.
Then he shrugged and walked to the other end of the bar.
"Serves him right," Sheryl said. "Let me hear the story, Bobby."
"This soldier is taking a shower. All the other guys in his company are crowded around the stall, looking in at him, craning for a look at him. That's because the guy has a penis that's only an inch long. Finally, the guy can't take it anymore. He turns to them and yells, 'What's the matter? You never seen anybody with a hard-on before?' "
Sheryl burst out laughing again.
From the other end of the bar, Larry grimaced sourly, and said, "Very funny."
"So which one are you, Bobby?" Sheryl asked. "The fourteen-incher or the inch-long wonder?"
"I thought we weren't going to hurry," he said.
"Listen, it's your money," Sheryl said. "Take all the time you need."
"I mean, I thought we were having fun here," he said.
"We are," she said.
"I mean, isn't this fun?"
"I love your stories, Bobby," she said.
"You're a fun girl," he said. "I can tell that."
"That's what I've been told, Bobby."
"I mean, I'll bet you like to do new and exciting things, don't you?"
"Oh, sure," she said. "I even did it with a police dog once."
"That's not what I meant. I meantnew things. Exciting things.'
"Well, to me that was new. Six guys watching while I did it with a police dog? That was new."
"It may have been new, but I'll bet it wasn't exciting," Bobby said.
"Well, I have to admit, when the dog went down on me that was sort of exciting. He had like this very raspy tongue, you know? Like sandpaper. I guess you could say that was sort of exciting. I mean, once you got past the idea of him being adog , which was disgusting, of course."
"Sheryl," he said, "I think you're terrific, I really do. We're going to have a lot of fun together, you'll see."
"Oh, I'm sure."
"We're going to do some new and very exciting things."
"I can hardly wait," she said.
"Lots of laughs," he said.
"I already find you very funny," she said.
"This midget goes into a men's room," he said. "And there's a guy standing there at one of the hellip;"
This second party was even better than the first one had been.
Parker was having the time of his life.
At the first party, he'd got drunk enough to believe he was really a writer passing himself off as a cop who only wanted to be a writer. At this party, he didn't tell anyone he was a cop because no one was in costume here, it wasn't that kind of a party. But even without the masquerade, he was having a marvelous time. Maybe because there were all sorts of interesting people here, most of them women. Or maybe because these interesting women all foundhim interesting.
This was very amazing to him.
He thought he was just being his usual shitty self.
It turned out that the woman whose apartment they were in was celebrating her sixty-third birthday tonight, which was why there was a party in the first place, never mind Halloween. Her name was Sandra, and she was the one Peaches had been expecting a call from earlier tonight, which was the only reason she'd answered the phone after that heavy-breathing creep got off the line. Sandra was her next-to-best friend; her best friend was the woman who'd thrown the costume party. Still, Peaches liked Sandra a lot, especially because she never expected a present on her birthday. She was a bit surprised, therefore, and somewhat annoyed, when Parker flatly and rudely expressed the opinion that no one over the age of sixty should be asked to blow out all the candles on a birthday cake in a single breath. And she was even more surprised when Sandra burst out laughing and said, "Oh, baby, how true! Who the hell needs such a humiliating stress test?"
Everyone laughed. Even Peaches.
Sandra then blew out all the candles in a single breath, and pinched Parker on the behind and asked him if he'd like the candles onhis cake blown. "Out," she added.
Everyone laughed. Except Peaches.
A little later on, encouraged by the attention a lot of these very interesting women were paying to ideas he'd never even known he'd had, Parker ventured a bit closer to home and suggested to a lady trial lawyer thatanyone committing a murder was at least a little bit crazy and that therefore the "legal insanity" defense was meaningless. The lady lawyer said, "That's very interesting, Andy. I had a case last week where hellip;"
It was astonishing.