As he snatched for his instruments, knowing for an absolute certainty that it would be too late, a slip of paper floated down from his hand.
On it was scribbled, “LANSING, 1555 Kinsey Street.”
SKINNY’S WONDERFUL
I bet a lot of these lads beef to you about their wives… you must get sick of it… but not me. I think Skinny’s wonderful. It isn’t every man has a wife who is loving, hardworking, brainy as they make them, talented seventeen different ways, and a professional dancer. You could draw me another beer. Hot as the hinges, isn’t it? Thanks.
I started calling her Skinny because she wasn’t meaty like the other girls, though she could outlast any ten of them dancing. They has nice enough figures if you go for that sort of thing, but they were meaty… not in the old-time beef-trust class, but the grits and greens and side meat showed. You know how they round them up. Lad goes south and puts an ad in the country papers: Girls One Hundred Dollars a Week. Likely looking ones he asks to strip. If they will and the figure’s okay they’re in.
Skinny’s no stripper. They always try to have one real dancer in those shows so they can call them artistic and give the boobs’ libidos a rest. Of course Skinny always sheds a few clothes… that’s a must… but she never goes all the way. Shinny provides the touch of imagination. She’s an Aztec priestess with a glass knife or a Russian duchess with a whip. Once she was Joan of Arc holding a cross and her robe got burned off six times a night… quite a lighting effect… and she does a half-and-half apache dance where she throws herself all over the stage and kicks herself. She was going to be Queen Theodora once with blue and gold robes and a jeweled cross, but they told her the Irish boobs would think it was supposed to be the Virgin Mary.
No wonder she’s skinny the way she’s always worked on those routines. Rehearse, rehearse, over and over. All around the living room. Whew! You could draw me another and have one yourself this time. Okay, a shortie. Once before I knew her she was working a bog club date where the boobs sat at tables having dinner. Skinny was doing a slow backbend, bare middle, when one of the yells, “That girl looks starved, Let’s give her something to eat,” and he throws a roll. Right away hard rolls are skidding all over all over the stage and a few thudding on her ribs. She finished the act though. Some of those club dates are pretty terrible. They even expect the pianist to play naked. Can you imagine?
But Skinny’s no stripper and be damned to my mother for calling her one. Just after we got married Skinny gave a dance recital in our back garden for some of mother’s friends and a few of ours. Mother said afterwards she was trying to give Skinny every chance. It was very beautiful, blue spotlights, Greek robes; Isadora Duncan sort of thing, Skinny’s really an artist. But right in the middle of one number she popped a shoulder strap. I don’t see anything wrong about a breast, certainly not one of Skinny’s, it’s sort of tiny and tender, its makes you think of little kids. Naturally Skinny finished the act, she always does, but Mother thought, she should have stopped… made like September Morn I suppose… or worn a brassiere. Mother also said Shinny wasn’t careful about drawing the alcove curtains when she changed costumes and that she shouldn’t have stood on the alcove table to do it. She worries and fusses and criticizes all the time.
Skinny’s nothing like that. She has a wonderful disposition. That’s why I’m telling you about her. I wouldn’t want to bore you with my woes. Of course she screams at me sometimes and throws the soup, but it’s generally lukewarm soup, Skinny believes hot foods give you cancer… I’m a lucky man, wouldn’t you say? Once she did throw some paint at me, I mean trip me and shove me into a bog slopping puddle of it. She’d got me to help her paint the living room ceiling… she’s always redecorating the apartment… and I climbed on the stepladder and right away spilled a two-gallon can. She had justification that time, you must admit. It wasn’t anything like the night she got mad at me in the car and started stamping on my ankle and finally hit the gas pedal. We went off the road… no bones broken though the birdcage got knocked open and the white rats escaped out of it. But that night Skinny had been drinking and I must have been beefing to her. Normally she has a wonderful disposition, it’s just that she has all this energy and it has to find an outlet.
Skinny has energy enough for ten women. Did I say ten? I meant two hundred. By contrast I have what you might call a lethargic disposition, I need Skinny to balance me off.
It’s not only energy. Skinny has brains. You may think I’m exaggerating, you may think I’m just a lad mooning about his girl, but I actually believe Skinny has brains enough to be president of the United States, if we had women presidents. Something like a combination of Claire Booth Luce and Bridgitte Bardot. Once an intellectual lad told Skinny she had no brains at all, but she argued him down. She’s talented in all sorts of directions. Take interior decoration…
No, no, that’s all right. Go ahead and serve them, it’s your vocation. Hello, friend. Join me in a beer? Has it ever occurred to you, friend, that women have a nest-building instinct? Take my wife Skinny. Every six months, regular as clockwork, she has to rent a new apartment and redecorate it from vestibule to garbage can. If she doesn’t she starts brooding. She does a wonderful job… white woolly rugs, low tables, dramatic simplicity. My mother’s all wet when she says our places always look like night clubs when Skinny’s through with them. Mother’s never been inside a burlesque bar in her life.
Skinny’s awfully smart about figuring out stuff to use in decorating, stuff nobody else would think of, and finding places where you can pick it up for nothing or sort of snitch it. Driftwood, big branches with leaves on, travel posters, old spotlights and gelatin from the night clubs, wicker baskets a yard across, ten-gallon green glass carboys, bricks and tiles, you name it. We can’t drive past a house that’s being torn down but what we have to stop and rummage for old ironwork. We generally find it too and it’s always the biggest heaviest piece. She’s always calling me up at the last minute to tell me to stop off somewhere on the way and bring home the damndest things. She never stops hunting. Sometimes when it’s a snitch operation she gets caught, but she always has an explanation. One night when she was tearing down flowered branches in a private forest just off the highway a watchman yelled at her and started to come running, but she screamed back that she was only going to the powder room and what sort of a filthy old Peeping Tom was he, anyway? I’m generally along to carry the branches and tear down the bigger ones she points out.
But of course moving every six months is the real monster job. Especially lugging and repotting all these tremendous plants. Skinny hammers nails in the living room and drapes the vines around. Striped and spotted leaves bigger than your two hands. You felt you’re right in the jungle.
No, we haven’t any children. I suppose if we did she’d take out her nest-building instinct on them. Still, I don’t know. She has an awful lot of excess energy, there might still be some left over for plants and things. Besides, she likes to entertain. She lives for her parties.
Skinny’s a great little hostess. She knocks herself out getting ready for her parties… all sorts of smorgasbord spread out, a huge punchbowl with colored ice, the kitchen set up for making pizza. And she’s generally stayed up housecleaning the whole night before… those are the nights we get our complaints from the neighbors, not on the party nights. Our parties are pretty quite, even Skinny doesn’t have much energy left, and then our friends are an odd lot, they’re all sorts… show people, some of Mother’s friends. Skinny’s father’s social-minded characters, some of the people from the dime store, and now my securities lads… they don’t mix so well and Skinny always invites them all. You know, it’s only on party nights that Skinny gets even the teeniest bit rubber-kneed drunk… it’s simply that getting ready has taken it out of her. She knocks herself out giving us all a good time.