Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny Read Online Free
Author: Garrison Keillor
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How had Joey gotten wind of my secret?
Had I talked in my sleep?
Had I slept with the wrong person? Had someone spotted my vacation brochure with a circle around the August 24 “Northern Nirvana” voyage of the MS Bel Canto, from Oslo for fourteen fun-filled nights in the fjords north to Tromsø and back, and my heavy underlining of “the King Haakon Penthouse Suite with king-size bed and 800 sq. ft. balcony with hot tub”?
If an elderly halfwit like Joey had sniffed out my secret, then half of St. Paul might be onto me, too. Maybe Lieutenant McCafferty, who has often promised me a one-way ticket to Winnipeg, or Gene Williker of the
Dispatch,
who’s made a career out of smacking down the upwardly mobile. McCafferty was still sore that I tripped him up in the St. Olaf Choir case. They had sung in Acapulco for a convention of Lutheran stockbrokers, and he nabbed them at the airport with a suitcase stuffed with marijuana, street value of $1.2 million. I proved that the airline had delivered the wrong bag. Also that the marijuana was alfalfa. Street value: a buck seventy-five. And McCafferty’s boss reassigned him to traffic control for thirty days, and he stood there in his neon orange vest waving his arms in the middle of Sixth and St. Peter and cursing me with every gin-flavored breath. Likewise Gene Williker would be thrilled to blow me out of the water, having fallen for the choral bust (WHERE THERE’S SMOKE, THERE’S CHOIR: OLAF KIDS CAUGHT WITH STASH OF HASH)
and gotten a sixty-day demotion to the obit division. I could picture him and McCafferty sniffing down my trail and putting the thumbscrews to witnesses and writing the indictment and then the sixty-five-point headline in the Monday paper (NOIR NABBED IN DRUG SCAM, FORMER B-GIRL SINGS TO GRAND JURY)
.
Here I was, after years of low cash flow, sitting on a beautiful secret with the potential to boost me out of the Ditch of Despond and set me up on Easy Street and buy me the luxury cruise, the Corvette, the cashmere coat, the condo in Cancún, the cosmetic surgery, that I had long coveted, and bring wholehearted love into my life instead of the grudging attention of lonely women with self-esteem issues. All thanks to Naomi Fallopian, my old pal from back when I was a part-time bouncer at the Kit Kat Klub.
Ah, Naomi. Woman of my dreams. Song of my heart. Light of my loins. My rescuer.
I took the elevator back up to twelve, half expecting to see Joey lurking by my door, his faculties regained, waiting to crush me. I tiptoed down the hall and slipped into the office and turned on the electric heater. Which I had bought for $45 off a goombah relocating to Florida so he could get involved in the lucrative transplant organ racket. A sheet of ice on the window made it look as if the Acme were underwater. I took a hair dryer out of the file cabinet and blasted the ice on the glass so as to let in more light, but it was no go. I hate dimness, especially in winter. It gives me a feeling of incarceration. I thought,
Guy, you have got to get out of this town, and Naomi is your ride.
Naomi Fallopian hailed from Homer, Minnesota, the youngest of eleven children of a hog farmer and his wife, and came to St. Paul at age seventeen to attend Bible school. It was her daddy’s wish. He was a fervent Baptist who when he went to town liked to stand outside the tavern singing “The Ninety-and-Nine” and handing out gospel tracts entitled “Where Will You Spend Eternity?” and as a consequence his baby daughter grew up curious about the sins of the flesh. She learned to dance the jitterbug swing. She learned to smoke Luckies and drink sloe gin. She earned a reputation as a very good kisser. So he shipped her off to Summit Bible College, where she roomed with a professor of New Testament named Lyman Humble and his wife, Persis, who prayed morning and night and at every meal and every snack and every cup of coffee. They said grace if they took two aspirin and a sip of
How had Joey gotten wind of my secret?
Had I talked in my sleep?
Had I slept with the wrong person? Had someone spotted my vacation brochure with a circle around the August 24 “Northern Nirvana” voyage of the MS Bel Canto, from Oslo for fourteen fun-filled nights in the fjords north to Tromsø and back, and my heavy underlining of “the King Haakon Penthouse Suite with king-size bed and 800 sq. ft. balcony with hot tub”?
If an elderly halfwit like Joey had sniffed out my secret, then half of St. Paul might be onto me, too. Maybe Lieutenant McCafferty, who has often promised me a one-way ticket to Winnipeg, or Gene Williker of the
Dispatch,
who’s made a career out of smacking down the upwardly mobile. McCafferty was still sore that I tripped him up in the St. Olaf Choir case. They had sung in Acapulco for a convention of Lutheran stockbrokers, and he nabbed them at the airport with a suitcase stuffed with marijuana, street value of $1.2 million. I proved that the airline had delivered the wrong bag. Also that the marijuana was alfalfa. Street value: a buck seventy-five. And McCafferty’s boss reassigned him to traffic control for thirty days, and he stood there in his neon orange vest waving his arms in the middle of Sixth and St. Peter and cursing me with every gin-flavored breath. Likewise Gene Williker would be thrilled to blow me out of the water, having fallen for the choral bust (WHERE THERE’S SMOKE, THERE’S CHOIR: OLAF KIDS CAUGHT WITH STASH OF HASH)
and gotten a sixty-day demotion to the obit division. I could picture him and McCafferty sniffing down my trail and putting the thumbscrews to witnesses and writing the indictment and then the sixty-five-point headline in the Monday paper (NOIR NABBED IN DRUG SCAM, FORMER B-GIRL SINGS TO GRAND JURY)
.
Here I was, after years of low cash flow, sitting on a beautiful secret with the potential to boost me out of the Ditch of Despond and set me up on Easy Street and buy me the luxury cruise, the Corvette, the cashmere coat, the condo in Cancún, the cosmetic surgery, that I had long coveted, and bring wholehearted love into my life instead of the grudging attention of lonely women with self-esteem issues. All thanks to Naomi Fallopian, my old pal from back when I was a part-time bouncer at the Kit Kat Klub.
Ah, Naomi. Woman of my dreams. Song of my heart. Light of my loins. My rescuer.
I took the elevator back up to twelve, half expecting to see Joey lurking by my door, his faculties regained, waiting to crush me. I tiptoed down the hall and slipped into the office and turned on the electric heater. Which I had bought for $45 off a goombah relocating to Florida so he could get involved in the lucrative transplant organ racket. A sheet of ice on the window made it look as if the Acme were underwater. I took a hair dryer out of the file cabinet and blasted the ice on the glass so as to let in more light, but it was no go. I hate dimness, especially in winter. It gives me a feeling of incarceration. I thought,
Guy, you have got to get out of this town, and Naomi is your ride.
Naomi Fallopian hailed from Homer, Minnesota, the youngest of eleven children of a hog farmer and his wife, and came to St. Paul at age seventeen to attend Bible school. It was her daddy’s wish. He was a fervent Baptist who when he went to town liked to stand outside the tavern singing “The Ninety-and-Nine” and handing out gospel tracts entitled “Where Will You Spend Eternity?” and as a consequence his baby daughter grew up curious about the sins of the flesh. She learned to dance the jitterbug swing. She learned to smoke Luckies and drink sloe gin. She earned a reputation as a very good kisser. So he shipped her off to Summit Bible College, where she roomed with a professor of New Testament named Lyman Humble and his wife, Persis, who prayed morning and night and at every meal and every snack and every cup of coffee. They said grace if they took two aspirin and a sip of
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