"Want me to pull it in for you?" I nod toward the Olds, then tip my head toward the garage. "I can do it myself." Sure you can, Pops. I'm not going to argue with him. Just like that, he changes his mind, says I can park his car for him. Whoopee ding. Thank you, Sahib. Oh no, now he's taking out his wallet. You get what you pay for, nothing for free, don't want to be beholden-the old Northern European, Calvinistic ethos. Julie hates the rigidity of the people around here. I tell her, Hey, where else can we live that ~ this cheap? When that doesn't work, I add, And safe. She appreciates the safety factor. Bill thumbs through the wad of bills in his broke-down wallet. "Here, how much do I owe you?" Suddenly greedy, I've got a mind to call his bluff, jam my fist in . there and take all his ill-gotten booty, maybe pay off our credit card debt. I heard he was a real skinflint with his employees when he ran the trucking business out on the main drag. Instead, I answer with a look of wounded pride and say the expected thing, which in this case also happens to be the right thing, ''No, no, that's okay, we're neighbors, after all. We're neighbors." Yeah, you said that already. I don't know why I'm getting peeved at myself, except maybe because of our relative poverty. I just don 't have a shark's instinct when it comes to long green. As Bill shoves his wallet back into his wrinkled khaki pants, a tiny tear forms in the corner of my eye. Returning to a tried and true theme, he says, "Good for nothing, good for the glue factory." Free-associating now, I riff on his lead. Horse meat, horse hide, horse gizzard, horse feathers, tastefully glued to form a sculpture titled, "Look What's Become of Bill D." I've got two sculptures due by the end of the semester in the art class I'm auditing down at theU. Uh oh, here comes Mrs. D. flying out of the house, her mouth screwed on sideways, arms all akimbo. She's as skinny as he is fat. She gapes at the Olds, its front wheels cramped off, the door flung open, sitting high and dry on the lawn next to the bird bath
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Filii #21