The Professor snapped his plastic fork at
the bottom of the Takee-Outtee box, trying hard for the last kernel of shrimp
fried rice.
"I'm dreaming of the pan-roasted chicken with
Bulgar pilaf at Herbsaint," he sighed. "Or maybe plantains in coconut milk,
with a pinch of dark and savory Lamari."
"We got cheese puffs," offered Roach, opening
the refrigerator and rooting around. "Hey, here's some leftover soup. I ain't
sure what kind. Some kinda soup du jour."
"The trouble with soup du jour is that
they change it every damn day," said Jimmy Chimichanga. We all looked at him,
but no one could be sure.
"You don't have soup du jour here,"
asserted the Professor, who'd gone to the fridge to root around. "It's more
like soup d'annee. Soup of the year."
"The food's so bad around here," Jimmy informed
Roach, "that you oughta say a prayer after the meal."
Still, there is plenty about this layout that
is definitely uberRoach. Like the Ethan Allen spider-backed chairs, the overstuffed
oak sofa, the Kashgai rugs, the mahogany Hudson River planter box brimming with
bromeliads. The Professor, me and Jimmy Chimichanga have been invited to see
how well Roach -- a man of no fixed abode -- is doing these golden afternoons.
"What's the story, morning glory?" I ask brightly.
"It was my cousin Leo's idea," Roach began.
If he thinks the questions are going to be hard, Roach always begins by asserting
things are someone else's idea. It's an old multiple-offender tactic.
"This here's one of them palaces got caught
in the middle of a matrimonial mess," continued Roach, flicking his doobie ash
into a Victorian diamond-cut crystal rose bowl. "The husband's been ordered
out by a judge. The lady of the house is a bigtime mouthpiece, and she gave
Cousin Leo a key to deliver a banker's lamp he got some place. And on the way
back, he takes the key to Harry's Ace. Duplication is the name of the game."
"A lady with trust: a rare thing these days
and soon to be rarer," declared the Professor. "And where is she now?"
"She's away for a coupla weeks, doing some
legalities in New York," Roach said happily. "That's her picture on the wall."
Prof ankled over to study the likeness. "She
looks like the sort who headed off to college with dreams of being discovered
by the best sorority and stayed to marry one of those boys with a Roman numeral
after his name," he observed.
Just then a horn blows and we look out the
French doors to see Cynthia alighting from a Dubonnet-red El Camino, 1968 vintage.
Whatever's the opposite of mint condition is this El Camino.
Even with the tone-on-tone hair coloring,
Cynthia still looked pretty good walking up the walk. Nobody who possesses what
she possesses ever starved to death. With a high flourish, she pulled a bottle
of tequila from her mock-alligator purse. "I don't come empty-handed to addresses
like these," she exclaimed.
"Excuse me. I hear Jose Cuervo calling my
name. 'Amigo,' he cries," cried Jimmy Chimichanga.
So we all poured a drink and sprawled around
on the overstuffed sofa and spider-backed chairs. "OK. So what are you and your
scruffy cousin doing in this hotel?" Cynthia lightly demanded.
"They're like unannounced housesitters," said
the Prof. "Volunteer work, actually."
We sat and sipped. Nobody talked for a while.
Cynthia got up and looked over the picture of the lady of the house. "If I wanted
to chill a beer, I'd slip it next to her heart," she guessed.
"Sounds like peroxide envy to me," guessed
the Professor.
We all sipped anew. Then Cynthia said, "There
are people who live like this every day. Think about it. This is why in them
old detective movies, it's always the butler that done it. Why? Because the
poor butler had to be around this kinda stuff all day and then go live his own
life in the basement or the Y or something."
"Bummer, dude," agreed Roach.
"Why, Cynthia, you are a true social and economic
leveler," declared the Professor. "With more like you, communism wouldn't fail
as it did."
"There wasn't enough people who got to see
the insides of places like this," Cynthia retorted.
"Not everyone's got a Cousin Leo," noted Roach.
"Allah be praised," said the Prof. "What say
we all go off in search of the filthy lucre that buys dumps like this?"
"I'm waiting for Leo," Roach said. "We gonna
hose out the inside of his Hyundai and put in a claim for storm damage."
"Remind me to stop and get a Pick Six on the
way home," I said brightly, swimming in ambition.
