The Pigman Read Online Free Page B

do now?”
    “You know very well what you did.”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “Well, you just ask your father.”
    “I’m not asking him, I’m asking you.”
    “Kenneth never gave us any trouble,” she just had to add, neatly folding the polishing rag.
    “You just never caught him.”
    Kenneth is my older brother who’s married and carries an attaché case to Wall Street every day. He’s eleven years older than me.
    “Get yourself a glass of milk, but rinse out the glass,” she babbled, darting up the stairs. I could tell she just got back from the beauty parlor because her hair was frizzed like she had just rammed her fingers into an electric socket.
    “What did I do?” I yelled from the kitchen as I opened a Pepsi. Whenever she tells me to get a glass of milk, I feel like a Pepsi and vice versa.
    “What did I do?”
    “You know!”
    “
Please
tell me.”
    She came to the top of the stairs with a bottle of hair spray in her hand. “You put glue in the telephone lock!” she wailed.
    “I did
what
?”
    “You heard me.”
    “I put glue in the telephone lock? Are you crazy?”
    “When your father comes home we’ll see who’s crazy.” She gave her hair a quick spray to make sure none of the frizz would disappear.
    “I’m innocent.”
    “It was a very mean thing to do. Your father tried to call his office this morning, and he couldn’t get the lock off. He couldn’t dial!”
    “I didn’t do it.”
    “Then who did?”
    “The ghost of Aunt Ahra.”
    “Your father’ll have to talk to you,” she said and ran upstairs. Then I heard her vacuuming in her bedroom.
    I blame an awful lot of things on the ghost of Aunt Ahra because she died in our house when she was eighty-two years old. She was really my father’s mother’s sister, if you can figure that one out, and she had lived with us ever since the time she took a hot bath in her own apartment and couldn’t get out of the bathtub for three days. They found her when she finally managed to throw a bottle of shampoo through the bathroom window, and it splattered all over the side of a neighbor’s house. The neighbor thought it was the work of a juvenile delinquent at first, which is sort of funny if you think about it awhile.
    “So you’re not going to give me a dollar twenty-five; is that what you’re trying to communicate to me?”
    “He couldn’t even dial his own office.”
    “I told you the ghost of Aunt Ahra did it.”
    “This is not a joking matter.”
    “Mother, your hypertension is showing.”
    Well, that severed maternal relations for the afternoon, and I had no intention of waiting for Bore to come home. I decided to give Lorraine the signal to meet me, so I picked up the phone and tapped the connection button ten times, which is the same as dialing
O
. The keyhole of the lock was still expertly crammed with glue.
    “Yes?”
    “Hello, operator? Would you please get me Yul-1219?”
    “You can dial that number yourself, sir.”
    “No, I can’t. You see, operator, I have no arms.”
    “I’m sorry, sir.”
    “They’ve got this phone strapped to my head for emergency calls, so I’d appreciate it if you’d connect me.”
    “I’ll be happy to, sir.”
    As soon as I could hear the number ring once I hung up. That was always the signal for Lorraine to meet me at the corner of Eddy and Victory Boulevard if she could get out of the house.
    “You’re ruining your lungs with that thing” was the first remark out of her mouth besides a cough from a misdirected puff from my cigarette. She sounds just like her mother when she says that.
    “I’ve been thinking, and I’ve decided we’d better go over and collect the ten bucks.”
    “I’ve been thinking, and I’ve decided we’d definitely better not,” she snapped.
    “We’re not doing anything bad,” I insisted.
    “Ha!”
    “He sounded lonely on the phone, now didn’t he?”
    “So what?”
    “Lonely people need visitors, so…” I made believe I wanted to look at a new