Owen continued, “They’d been coming to Cornhusker games since the days of Bob Devaney and they got to know all the other season ticket holders around them, got to be good friends with them, visited each other even when it wasn’t the fall, and so on. But then his wife up and died. What a tragedy it was. Choking back a sob, the fella caressed the seat next to him and says, ‘She used to sit right here.’ ‘I’m terribly sorry to hear that,’ the stranger says. ‘But that doesn’t explain why your friends aren’t here.’ And he tells the guy, ‘Oh. They’re all at the funeral.’”
Women hovered around Natalie as she sat on the yellow sofa and tore the wrapping off a box. She lifted the lid on the box and exclaimed, “Hair care products!” She faced the beautician, Ursula, and smiled. “Are they from you?”
“Big surprise, huh?”
“I like them very much.”
“Well, at least they’re not strands of barbed wire pounded onto a board.”
Onetta scowled. “Hey, hey, hey.”
At Owen’s, a raucous crew was hooting and yowling, shoving each other in various directions, taking off feed company caps and sailing them across the room. Carlo walked in from the kitchen with a paper plate of food that he was examining suspiciously. He asked Owen, “Are these really escargots, or did you just put cat food on some crackers?”
“Hell, I don’t know,” Owen said. “We did kind of run short there.”
Carlo went ahead and ate one, and then shrugged as if he still couldn’t tell.
Pierre was standing in front of the television, watching with interest Owen’s tape of The Wild Bunch, when a guy held out a Falstaff to him. “Beer?”
Pierre shook his head.
The guy said, “It’s not just a breakfast drink, you know.” And then he flopped onto the sofa and belched volcanically. Pierre sidled away and was given a feed cap by the Reverend, who immediately shouted “I’m gonna mingle with the shlemiels!” Someone else gave Pierre an empty Husker stein, and yet another else dropped a nudie Kewpie doll inside.
The highway snowplow driver named Orville walked by, wearing a T-shirt that read, “Instant Idiot—Just Add Alcohol.” Shaking a can of beer and snapping it open, he spritzed foam over Pierre’s front.
“Oh, hey!” Orville said. “Sorry about that.”
“What are formal clothes for?” Pierre said.
“No, no. I have to even things now.” And Orville poured his beer over his own head.
Upstairs in Mrs. Christiansen’s rooming house, Opal walked down the hallway, lifting off the glued-on tin door numbers with her fingernails and stacking them in her palm. When all the doors were numberless, she turned and admired her work, saying aloud, “No monkey business on my watch!”
On the first floor, Mrs. Christiansen, Iona, and Natalie were hostessing amidst the chaos of partying women, c
arrying bowls of food out to the dining room table where a buffet was arranged.
Peering into the kitchen, Natalie spied a few of the younger women spiking the bowl of punch with Southern Comfort. She said nothing about it.
Ursula walked in from the foyer, carrying a formidable boom box. She asked, “Mrs. Christiansen, is it okay if we put on some of our music?”
Mrs. Christiansen answered, “Of course, dear; whatever you like.”
She disappeared, and then some shrieking hard metal music shook the walls. Natalie, Mrs. Christiansen, and Iona all looked up with pain.
Opal grimly sidestepped down the stairs because of her hip and walked with gravity and purpose to the dining room. After a second there was a scream and the song was silenced. Opal left the dining room, humming.
26
Pierre looked at the clock. Eleven P.M. “The hour, it is correct?” he asked.
Dick nodded and got up. “I’ll sure hate missing the end of this symposium, but I gotta be goin’.”
The four-hundred-pound photographer, Biggy, toddled up to him, grinning, four golfballs in his mouth.
Wild applause from the others as Carlo yelled, “Four! He got four in there! I thought we had him with three!” As the priest used a butter knife to pry the golf balls out, the trucker from Sidney collected gambling debts.
Owen said, “I can top that; I can top that, gentlemen.” With a flourish he led the way back into his bedroom where he put his hand on one of the large brass balls topping a post of the bedstead. “I can get my hooter around this.”