Chapter 13

JACKED BY A JACKASS

"Billy?"

"Yeah. Leo?"

"I'm in the hospital."

"What?"

"Don't shout! I can hear you. I said I was in the hospital. That's where I'm calling you from. I'll be here a couple of days so you've got to do me a lot of favors. First...."

"Shut up! Wait a minute! I just woke up, Leo.

I've got to get the fog out of my brains. What time is it? Seven, seven-thirty! Good God! What the fuck are you doing in the hospital at this hour of the morning? I never even knew you to be awake this early!"

"I never got to sleep. I've been here since four last night."

"What happened?"

"An accident. Now, Billy, listen carefully. I want you..."

"Wait a minute! What kind of accident?"

"Minor injury. Nothing serious. Skip it, Billy, it's only a painful anecdote. Let's get down to more serious business. I've got these favors I want you to do for me. First of all..."

"No deal, Leo, we're friends. I hope you remember that. I want to know about your accident. Last I saw you was about one-thirty last night when you finally decided to call off the rehearsal. I left with the girls. You stayed behind with Conchita."

"That's right. I've sort of been making it with her lately and it was kind of late, so I thought she should sleep over..."

"Or, in other words, you two have been making it regularly but you're afraid it might not look good in front of the rest of the cast?"

"Practice what you preach! That's my motto. But I've never lived up to it yet. Of course, Conchita and I have been a steady duo in the sheets for the last three months. She had this lovely apartment when I met her. But I-as you may remember-I was unfortunately living in the waiting room of Grand Central Station and renting their facilities for a quarter a day just to piss!"

"Those were hard times."

"Mildly speaking."

"So you moved in with Conchita?"

"A lovely apartment. Tree-shaded street, dignified neighbors. For a moment, I was reminded of paradise."

"Where you've never been?"

"Nor any man, I doubt. Save those heavenly moments when he's up on his knees with a stout cock dangling in his hand and the eager young cherry of a squirmy maid laid out in a stretcher below him."

"You sound like you're quoting yourself."

"I am. Some of the lines I left out of the play. But what else can I do at seven-thirty in the morning but indulge in regrets as I babble on the phone?"

"You can give me some hard information, Leo. That's what you can do. What happened?"

"I told you. I moved from the railroad station to the lovely apartment of Conchita Citron, a refugee from Havana."

"So that's where you were living the last few months when you were so evasive?. "

"Exactly!"

"Why didn't you just come out and say so? For Christ's sake, Leo, there certainly wasn't anything to be ashamed of. Conchita! Sure, I remember her from your last show."

"She's a hot piece," he added. "I remember her doing a striptease at that party. Beautiful boobs! What are you ashamed of? I'd be fucking her first chance I could."

"I'm not ashamed, Billy, not at all. But there are several nuances to the affair which you might not perceive immediately. The first is that when she was acting in my last show, I was living with Penelope, that gangly pimple from Milwaukee. Certainly you remember her? I do! Sometimes I wake up at night screaming."

"She was ugly!"

"A horror!"

"Frightening. She certainly had pimples."

"And money. Each pimple was worth a million. One great pity of my life is that Penelope no longer loves me."

"She might still love you, Leo, but her love no longer has the monetary value it once did."

"That's true. After she lost a fortune investing in my last few plays, her parents had a trustee appointed to manage her estate. He was not a man fond of the theatre."

"No!"

"Anyway, since I was living with Penelope, I didn't remember Conchita until I saw her again a few months ago and wound up in the sack."

"We're getting away from the point, Leo. That always happens when I talk to you. What I want to know is just why the fuck you didn't bother to mention that you were living with Conchita. What's the big deal about that? Instead, there was all that bullshit trying to get in touch with you all the time!"

"Messages with the answering service! What a pain in the ass! You could have just told me you were living with Conchita. It would have saved a hell of a lot of fucking time and aggravation."

"At twenty, Billy, time and aggravation have hardly the meaning that they do to me. In other words, I'd rather you had the worry. My nerves are too fragile for that. The reason is simple. Andrea."

"Andrea?"

"Of course."

"I don't understand."

"You dolt! Billy, at times you astonish me-really you do; about certain things I find you well informed and perceptive-an excellent judge of people. But about other things, you're a dolt."

"Especially about Andrea. You can foam at the mouth about how much you respect her for taking over the responsibility of your family. That you can do, as though Andrea were Joan of Arc or someone like that. But somehow, now matter how hard I try, I can't get you to understand that Andrea is also a very sexy woman. Very sexy indeed! I'd love to ball her! So would everyone else I know who's ever even seen her. Fuck your sister, Billy, that's what most people think about when they see you and her holding hands."

"What's gotten into you, Leo? I thought we settled this yesterday. I told you I don't feel comfortable talking about Andrea like this! Mimosa-okay! In fact, I've got something to tell you about Andrea that should turn you on ... Mimosa, I mean, Mimosa!"

"Mimosa, Shitosa, why don't you listen for a change? All I'm saying is that while I was living with Conchita, I didn't mention it to you because I was also trying to fuck your sister at the same time. If she knew I was living with a ho-tblooded Cuban cigar, I thought that might lessen my chances to fuck her. That's all."

"Okay, skip it!"

"Fuck you, skip it! I've got nothing to do in this goddam hospital bed but lie here and dream about the past. So I might as well babble like a loony. I figured if your sister thought I was a poor unfortunate waif, she might take pity on me and screw, but she didn't."

"So I drowned my sorrows in Conchita's huge hole. Huge is an understatement. An army could hold their maneuvers in there. Her cunt is the size of the Grand Canyon. Anyway, we were neatly ensconced in her pleasant little pad until a shortage of funds required me to sell her furniture and sub-let the place. We moved backstage of the theatre."

"You're actually living backstage?"

"Romantic."

"Lice. That place is filthy."

"And, of course, I can't tell the truth to the girls in the case since their image of me requires that I act out the role of a dirty old lecher."

"You worry too much about roles."

"I worry too much-period! What time is it?"

"Seven forty-five. In the morning. I can still hardly believe I'm talking to you this early."

"I had to call you, Billy. I'm bored here in the hospital, lying on my stomach with nothing to do. And yet, I've got at least a zillion urgent errands and you've got to help out, Billy, only for a couple of days. I'm depending on you and Conchita to fill the bill for me while I'm gone. Oversee rehearsals, things like that. Conchita has a list. You can meet her at the theatre any time."

"Okay, Leo, sure. You know I'm glad to help out. Anything I can do at a time like this, I sure will. Only one question. The thing that's been on my mind since you called. What happened?"

"I slipped and fell."

"Bullshit!"

"Well ... promise to keep a secret."

"I promise."

"The lights were out. I got undressed and climbed into bed. The donkey saw my ass. And I think he thought I was his brother. The next thing I know, this mammoth mule is climbing up my spine and trying to ram his hairy dong into my rectum as if I'm a thermometer!"

"Leo...? "

"That's right. I was raped. By the donkey!"