Excuse Me for Living

by Ric Klass

  The Zipper Breaks

  on the way down, forcing Albert to tear his pants in his pixilated frenzy to get it on with Elaine Bushkin at the Hampton Hideaway Motel adjacent to LFOD. Her job as the gung-ho “spa” up-and-at-em chieftess maintains for her a fit body and plenty of stamina, neither of which cards can be found in Albert’s hand. Yet another session with his son Daniel has exhausted him. Just getting into position today leaves the junkyard magnate breathless and panting in the unromantic way.

  “I don’t think I can do it, doll.”

  “Again? Jesus, Al, you’ve got to go on that diet I gave you or you’ll drop dead before your divorce is final and we can finally get married.”

  “Right. You’re right, honeybun.” Distressed at discovering his ripped trousers virtually unwearable.

  By this time the “divorce proceedings” have taken two years off Elaine’s life in her clandestine affair with the amiable, rich fatso. And she’s not getting any younger. It was only three months ago when she had her own attorney check the courthouse records to discover there weren’t any “divorce proceedings.” Amazon women aren’t called the fiercest warriors in ancient history for nothing, and as the saying goes, “Don’t get mad, get even.” Possessing normal womanly modesty, Elaine’s frankly glad that Albert can’t perform his manly duties today. Saves her the embarrassment of nude paparazzi pix – though not bad at all for her age, her tush isn’t what is used to be. She’s certain that the flash she saw outside the open window came from the camera of Harriet’s new private investigator – the one she must have hired after Elaine’s anonymous call informing dragon lady of this tryst’s time and place. “And by the way, Norman Butterworth, your own P.I., is the other guy screwing you along with Albert,” completed the call. Poor Albert had let it slip to Elaine how he had bamboozled the neglectful better half he married. Norman’s on the take from Al. Divorce and a new marriage will land on Albert sooner than he thinks, Elaine sighs with no little satisfaction.

  Albert points at the torn crotch of his pants. “Just look at this. How can I go home?” he pleads.

  “Harriet’s probably not there anyway. Just run in and say you have to go real bad if she asks, ‘What’s the hurry?’”

  “You. You’re like a shrink. You have the right words for everything, Elaine. If I only had a wife like you all these years,” Al says hurrying out.

  You will have a wife like me, Albert. Very soon, she comforts herself while watching him waddle off to his Mercedes holding his pants together. When Albert’s left a trail of dust, “He’s on his way home with torn slacks,” completes Elaine’s final furtive call to Harriet.

  “Thanks for nothing, Elaine, you harlot,” Harriet says and slams down the phone. Does she really think I don’t know who it is?

  But Elaine really doesn’t care.

  “The Dandy Man’s Here”

  shout Brucie, Ronnie, and The Chipster in unison, already well on their way to their own highly inebriated karma. Dan, magically it seems to them, has just materialized this witching hour from behind the gooseberry bushes. The three highly educated idiots sink to their knees and bow their heads to the ground in mocking obeisance to the infamous prep-school apothecary.

  “Rise, grasshoppers,” Dan commands. More to the point, “Where’s the chow? I’m famished.” Danny spies the feast just inside the glass French doors leading from the patio and pool to the ballroom. But he stops mid-stride away from the worshipers on the way to nourishment. “Who’s that beauty at the table?” Dan demands.

  Giving Ronnie a wink, “Why Dandy, you know Bertrand. He’s been with us for years,” Bruce replies with a straight face. “I didn’t think he was your type.”

  “A joke on your lips is no laughing matter, Brucie. Not your butler. Introduce me immediately to that dark-haired mirage or I’ll turn you into a man from the toad you are.”

  The knockout Charlotte Davison senses Danny’s fixed gaze on her. Charlie’s dressed to kill and dice into bite-sized pieces the sacrificial lambs who mistakenly think they’re the jackals stalking her at this fête instead of the other way around. The long-haired brunette’s hourglass figure requires no padded cups to provide shape for the dramatic pink, Givenchy floor-length halter evening gown with a plunging peek-a-boo slit.

  This femme fatale’s the sole heiress – when daddy dies, that is – to the G.F. Davison Vending Machine Corporation conglomerate, or rather the assets left.

  G.F. himself had only by chance wandered into this giant of a going concern. He started as a regular summer intern for the former Piker Coin-OP Company while he was completing his scholarship-paid bachelor’s degree in ancient history at Cornell. To his astonishment, old man Piker, a long-standing bachelor who treated G.F. like the son he never had, left the vast firm to him lock, stock and barrels of dough just months before graduation.

  G.F., a sexually frisky widower despite his age of eighty-one, knows that Charlie has only pretended to take an interest in his business all these years. Consequently, he recently decided like many of the other independent NAMA – National Automatic Merchandising Association – members to sell out to publicly-traded Aramark, known worldwide for its ballpark hot dog stands and candy bar machines.

  Charlotte had tried to be enthusiastic when G.F. took his little girl on trips to the many warehouses storing the coin-op’s no-arm bandit cash. He couldn’t understand why anyone, let alone his only daughter, wouldn’t be as thrilled as he at the sight of heaping King Croesus mounds of cold, hard silvery coins – and millions of them – serenely waiting for the Brinks trucks to arrive for the weekly shipment to his Chase Manhattan Bank account. He correctly intuited she faked excitement to please her daddy. Oh well, a cool $2.1 billion will augment his coffers soon when Goldman Sachs, Aramark’s investment bank advisor to the deal, puts the final touches on the merger. That positions his daughter in line for title of the most gorgeous and richest available debutante in the world, second only to perhaps a gal Charlie hangs out with – a well-known hotelier’s daughter. And far more than all his other assets, Charlotte is G.F.’s dazzling prized possession.

  G.F. married late in life to Andromeda Marie Jones, a magnetically gorgeous Broadway showgirl. He saw Anne (her stage name) background-dancing during an Oklahoma revival. She twirled so fast round and round in a long red gingham skirt and full petticoats that he could see her pink cotton bottoms. He lusted to see much more of her background thereafter. G.F. wooed her for four solid weeks. The other hoofers in the production began to complain when they needed to edge in sideways into the backstage dressing room for all the roses filling it – each blossom was tagged with a note begging for an introduction to the modest, small town girl.

  When Anne finally succumbed to the flowered courting, many unhappy relatives who reasonably expected to gorge themselves someday on siblingless and bachelor G.F.’s estate became dismayed. The lovebirds wed thirty days later on the steps of the Greek Parthenon. To the shame of Anne’s parents and much-holier-than-thou tsk-tsking by G.F.’s family, Charlotte was born nine months to the day after G.F. first met Anne. G.F.’s relations’ sanctimony seemed rewarded when Anne soon died unexpectedly from childbirth complications. But to the forever-after-disappointed lives of G.F.’s cousins, nephews, nieces and other various and sundry relatives, Charlotte herself sprang like a miniature Amazon from her mother’s loins full bloodedly screaming and healthy. The twenty-seven-year-old still can give full-breasted shrieks, including some later this very delightfully warm near-summer evening.

  “Charlie, come over here and give this Romeo a break,” shouts Brucie to the lilac-eyed goddess basking in the glow of Danny’s obvious adoration. “Take this for good luck, Dandy Man,” Bruce insists and slips a small bottle of white powder into Dan’s pocket. But Charlotte knows very well her considerable powers over the weak-minded sex and transfixes Danny with her intensely violet eyes and beckons him with her little finger. Not a bad looking stud, she considers.

  “Darth Vader couldn’t do
better,” remarks Ron to Bruce and The Chipster. They take in the show as entranced Dan floats zombie-like toward her, past the amorous couples already strewn in and out about the grounds and boudoirs of the luxurious playground in varied states of sobriety and undress.

  “Should we tell him her powers come from the dark side?” quips Ronnie.

  “He’ll find out soon enough,” answers Bruce, who himself took a full eighteen months to recover from the heady elixir of her casual interest and then disinterest in him as a sex partner two years before. “Just wait until he discovers she’s a black belt in karate.”

  Pirot stands nearby eyeing Danny and the rest of the crowd for possible future customers. He knows he’s dressed ridiculously in a – somewhat shiny giving it a tawdry effect – tuxedo complete with blood-red cummerbund. But it pays to advertise. The same goes for his pencil-thin mustache. Brucie hires this procurer, a not-so-young-anymore sophisticated lout of unknown nationality, to score the drugs, book the musicians, and reliably supply willowy and willing young women for his parties. Just tonight, Pirot arranged for three beauties to alight here on a chartered plane from Philadelphia.

  A Near Mating and Near Death

  await the hero. The rest that Daniel soaked up in the last two days serves him well – for an instant. Though confronted by the presence of a real live deity practicing her arts over silly mankind, he regains his typical composure.

  “Say, didn’t you forget to give me change at McDonald’s this afternoon? And I asked for onion rings, not fries.” Despite his recaptured savoir-faire, his eyes rivet on Charlie’s voluptitude bulging out of her low-cut pink silk gown. That her particular dress has a familiar design to it puzzles him.

  Bruce thoughtfully ordered Pirot to tastefully arrange bottles of imported liquor and gold-plated razorblades tied by leather strands to vials of cocaine. They’re placed on narrow antique Louis XV ormolu and tulipwood decorated bureaus throughout the downstairs. One in each of the eight palatial bedrooms, too.

  All of his senses on full alert – gustatory notwithstanding – and not taking his eyes off this heavenly vision, Dandy two-fistedly gorges himself on the succulently laid out, but PC-deliberated, viands. Nothing but healthy California Certified Organic Farmer meatless treats for these cokeheads.

  Although undisguised ogling of her more than ample bosom usually irritates Charlotte, she doesn’t mind this time. Danny’s new opening line unexpectedly makes her sincerely laugh – and this girl needs to laugh a little. All the better, he’s spellbound. “Thank you, Sir. I hope I can find a way to make it up to you,” Charlotte coquettishly replies. “Champagne?”

  Was this scene in Body Heat? he tries to remember. Somewhere in the back of his mind Danny does recall that liquor might be verboten for the time being. “I’m Dan Topler and, no, I’m on the wagon just now, uh. . . . ” he answers, fearing his wunderkind job at breaking the ice with this doll-and-a-half might vanish with a libation refusal.

  “Charlotte Davison. Friends call me Charlie. So you’re The Dandy Man? I’ve been panting to meet you. I’m on the wagon, too, Danny Boy.” She presses her thigh hard between the two of his. Now isn’t too soon for us to get very well acquainted, she decides. “Take just a skosh. You’ll feel better and so will your wagon.”

  She opens his mouth with two deeply crimson manicured fingernails and pours a twelve-ounce goblet of Champagne Perrier Jouët down his throat. Dan’s too weakened for more no’s, and they continue to down drinks for some minutes as an intoxicated duel incites them to ever louder and more physically challenging parries and thrusts. He calls her ravishing and licks her ear. She dubs him her eternal slave while pushing him to his knees tight to the nether nexus of her designer frock.

  As far as Dan, Daniel, The Dandy Man is concerned, the two of them have suddenly teleported alone together to a far away solar system. His initial firm control over himself and all he surveys has utterly passed and disappeared from view. For some reason, a few glasses of the bubbly have him spinning and a little nauseous.

  “He’s outmatched in this bout,” Chip Siegel, one of Dan’s Bexley Academy buds, wryly observes. Offspring of the very rich in this gang often simply refer to each other as children of corporate entities. The Chipster – son of Siegel Potato Chips, LLC, a manufacturer of many favorite highly-saturated snacks in the tri-state area – has become just one of a growing audience watching Charlotte make mincemeat out of Danny at the otherwise lacto-vegetarian buffet. Charlie’s nightly conquests of one or another of Brucie’s guests have become a spectator sport for the sotted crowd roused by occasional bets. The Chipster, surprisingly an inveterate gambler for an otherwise tightwad, shouts out, “One grand says she beds him tonight in the second round. Any takers?”

  But no one covers the bet because Charlotte has already grabbed Dandy by the crotch of his twilled silk trousers and started leading him past the hanging Foreign Legion sword collection, up the circular staircase, complete with statued niches of naked Aphrodite and Hercules, to her favorite bedroom – the one decorated as a pre-Ayatollah Shah-era Iranian incense-scented harem – mirrored cylindrical ceilings and flexible double-tubed hash water pipe included. Dan has no problem with this arrangement since he’s not on planet Earth in the first place and, in the second, a throbbing stomach pain now grips him in a growing panic.

  At first, Charlotte hoped for more of a challenge from this sweet talker, but she’s satisfied to saddle tight-butted Danny anyhow and shoves him forcefully to the Arabian linen-spread waterbed and rips off his trousers then jockeys.

  “Tanta Sadie?” Danny calls out, nearly unconscious.

  “Tonto said what?” she exclaims just seconds before The Dandy Man pukes all over her. Furious, “This is haute couture, you imbecile!”

  “Bless you, Officer Franklin,” are his last words before the ambulance arrives.

  Earlier that day. . . .

  The Posse Waits to Ambush

  Albert as soon as his Mercedes speeds into the oval driveway of the Topler McMansion on the North Shore. Robert Sugarbush, Harriet’s replacement private investigator, manages to cell-tel Harriet to be ready – how does she already know Albert’s headed home? he wonders – and beats Albert there from the Hampton Hideaway Motel where the illicit lovebirds couldn’t get it straight. A simple plan – Robert and Harriet will snare the tubby hubby just inside the front door. Harriet stands in front of the staircase like a menacing roadblock while Robert takes maybe a few hundred automated, rapid-fire Leica Digilux photos of Albert’s underwear sticking out of his ripped trousers.

  The extra pictures unfortunately are a necessity. Albert’s torn pants made him trip just as Sugarbush took the shot at the motel. The P.I. hightailed it before he could get another good snap because he saw Elaine peering out the window in his direction. The photo of the groping couple shows the top of Albert’s head and his pants, but not his face.

  While not completely nude, the pose of Elaine’s sexy, robust body could still manage a saleable foldout. A few snaps catching Albert running into the house with torn chinos will make the story zipper-tight. With or without permission from his clients, for a little extra vig on his gigs, Robert sells his digital exposés to whatever tabloid wants them. He also squeezes in a call to the New York Post Page Six editor, who instantly gives the photo sale a thumbs-up and will even use Robert’s suggested headline:

  Torn Trousers Topple Trash Tyrant Topler

  Another job well-done almost in the can, Robert Sugarbush pats himself on the back while marking time patiently for his next victim in the Topler foyer.

  Is this good for me or is this bad for me? Coco asks herself, watching her mother and the private investigator prepare her father’s sacrificial bonfire. She’s plenty bright anyhow, but it doesn’t take a MacArthur Foundation genius for Coco to deduce what’s up when Sugarbush sets his camera on a tripod facing the foyer. She has come home to surf the net and tie down the specs of the monster engine BMW dad pledged to her for earlier attending the g
ross display of her brother’s ineptitude.

  Now her MBA training comes into play: “Never forget, always do what’s best for you – screw everyone else,” her finance professor once said to her privately. On balance – promise or no promise – if her father gets ensnared, he won’t be in the mood to buy the silver two-seater coupe she has in mind. Furthermore, she swiftly calculates, embarrassing photos complicate the property division between her parents in the sure-to-come divorce. She throws a little mathematical domestic game theory into the equation. Statistically speaking, Coco’s better off with an even-steven property split in case she breaks off with one or the other in the inevitable offspring whose-side-do-you-take tug of war between the parental units. This is bad for me, concludes her unsweetened self.

  Ronnie Gets Yanked

  in the door by Harriet’s eager hand on his collar, crashes on the Perlino Bianco marble entrance, and gets automatically photographed fifty times before he knows what hit him. Ronald Schwartz’s status as a forever friend of the family since his caesarean birth twenty-five years ago from the womb of Harriet’s closet and long-lasting ally, Dolores, entitles him to barge into the Topler domicile without knocking. Since he was in the neighborhood he hoped that The Dandy Man might have already been sprung from the luxury looney bin.

  Besides, Coco might be there. Ron has always been too embarrassed to tell Danny that he has the hots for the older sister unit. Once as a teenager, he by-chance walked past her room and saw her au naturel, grooming herself in a full-length mirror, through her open – OK, he peeked between the crack – door. Ever since, he feels a rush even thinking of her. Now that they’re both older, their age difference doesn’t matter, and she’s edgy – an inexplicable draw for him. Maybe he could see her on the sly without Dandy hammering him. As for Coco, while he used to be just one of the little trolls her brother hung with, Ron’s muscular body has caught her eye on the few times she’s seen him lately – how well he’s hung seems more relevant now than with whom. And his recent early promotion to VP Marketing at Viacom brings added clout for this B-school grad.