Page 66 - WTP VOl.VII#5

The Couch (continued from preceding page)
“Lu, what’s important and you need focusing on, is that you can’t remain. Here is untenable. Your host, bottom line, wants you to go and help yourself. The Buick isn’t good, either. This is Maine. Winter isn’t far. Never is, and so pretty soon, there’ll be too much frost on the pump- kin for your tarp on the back window and your petri dish sleeping bag to friggin’ mitigate, dude. You’ll have to go, and you know that, Lu. Or do you plan on dying in the Skylark? If not, how ‘bout coming with us?”
“To where?”
“Togus, Lucien. Togus V.A. Hospital, in Augusta,” Dominic said.
“Togus,” Lucien cried, “No way.”
“Where, then, Lu? You tell us where else, because you got no money, from the looks of you. Just enough for a twelve pack. No prospects, unless I’m missing some- thing, and you can’t stay here. So tell me where, then, Lu?” Russ said. He gave his cousin time to answer. When Lucien didn’t, Russ continued, “The ancient laws of hospitality dictate that, now that you know your host wants the Skylark vacated, you got to go.”
“Paulie never said nothing to me,” Lucien said.
“So I guess you think that the rest of us are here, tracking you down in East Bumfuck, in order to make this shit up? That’s not your position, is it, Lu?”
“Yeah,” Lucien replied, “the ancient laws of hospitality that you’re pulling right out of your ass don’t say that I have to leave with you or Larry and Shemp over there.”
“Why Shemp for Albie, and not Curley or Curley Joe? Why aren’t either of them Moe?” Russ grinned at his cousin.
Despite the tension, Lucien chuckled. “I don’t fucking know,” he sighed.
“You can’t stay here, so why not come with us? Give the Togus option a chance.”
“That’s right, Lucien,” Dominic added. “Door to door service,” Albie chirped.
“How are you, Mister Ross? Been forever and a day,” Lucien mumbled.
“Wish things were under better circumstances, son, but maybe we’re here in a perfect nick of time,” Albie said. “Right when you need someone.”
“That so?” Lucien asked. Albie nodded, and then he and Russ and Dominic waited, expecting a verbal explosion, perhaps violence, at the very least, being told to get the fuck out. Instead, Lucien cocked his head to one side, like he had water in one ear, and asked, “Can I bring my beer?”
“Togus ain’t going to let you have that in the hospital,” Dominic said.
Lucien said, “Two hours to Augusta. They’ll be gone by then, and Russ will have a couple more.”
“Open containers in cars is against the law,” Dominic pointed out.
“Hell, lots of things are against the law, dad,” Russ said, clasping his cousin on the back with enough force to induce his first step towards Albie’s Toyota. “If Lu’s ready to take the ride, who’s going to begrudge us some road sodas? Let’s go. Next stop, the capital city.” He turned to Lucien, asking “Need to pack anything?”
“Nope.”
“Then I’ll grab the PBRs.”
All four of them were in the Toyota within minutes, heading west, towards Route 202, which would take them to the Maine Turnpike, and then, ulti- mately, Augusta. Russ and Lucien were in the back together, each holding an open beer, elbows resting on the dwindling twelve pack, which sat between them. Once they were confined together in the car, the depth of Lucien’s malodorous scent filled every nostril. The smell was extraordinary. Russ caught a whiff and wondered if Lucien had shit himself, not just once, either, but for a week or two. Breakfast and beer caught in Russ’ throat when he couldn’t evade the smell, even with all of the Toyota’s windows down on a beautiful fall day. Nothing mitigated the stench. Russ felt a few moments of panic, frantically looking around the vehicle’s floor for an empty plastic bag to hurl into, because the puke rising in his throat was about to meet the water gathering in his mouth, precipitating projec- tile vomiting, but the urge to vomit subsided at the last moment. Russ stuck his face right out the open window, to make sure the urge to puke did not re- turn. All of them, save Lucien, who wasn’t bothered, found a way to cope. Dominic regulated his breath- ing. Albie ignored it, having smelled worse during the Korean War.
Sitting in an enclosed space with a person who smelled so ungodly awful was the opposite of a treat
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