Cockeyed - Stevenson Richard. Страница 2

As the reporter closed in on Hunny, he spotted her moving toward him and broke away from the kick line and, in instant full Norma Desmond mode, came vamping at the camera, intoning tragically, “I am ready for my clooose-up, Channel 13!”

The room erupted in hilarity, and the reporter smiled agreeably, if maybe not quite getting the joke.

Riveted, Timmy said, “There we are. Our people. We’re on TV. But I don’t see Gore Vidal anywhere.”

“Or Eleanor Roosevelt. I hope straight viewers don’t get the wrong idea.”

Now the reporter was yelling into Hunny’s ear, “So how does it feel, Hunny? Being the state’s first lottery billionaire?”

Grabbing the mike, Hunny shrieked into it, “Oh, girl! How do I feel? I feel like I just had a date with…oh, who’s that hot number who almost won American Idol?”

Somebody in the room yelled, “Susan Boyle!” This brought down the house with cackles and groans.

“Listen, girl,” Hunny said, “I have to tell you, I just feel like the luckiest old queen in Albany, that’s how I feel. I would have been floating on air just to win a thousand dollars, which would have been really in cred ible. But to win a million dollars is just…it just doesn’t seem real!”

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“Billion!” several voices shouted out, and Hunny did a take and clutched his chest and faked a heart attack.

“God, I’m richer than Madonna,” Hunny blurted out, recovering, and then was struck by another sudden thought and cried, “Oh, Madonna, honey, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that! Girl, nobody is richer than you are! If you’re watching, I’m still your slave, and even if I’m almost a rich as you are now, I’ll never be as fabulous as you are!”

This produced gales of laughter, as well of cries of “That’s for sure!” and “Yes, you are! Yes, you are!”

Still mesmerized, Timmy said, “Oh my.”

I shared his amazement. “This will go down in the annals of Albany television news.”

As somebody passed Hunny a cigarette, and a hand with a lighter appeared from off-camera and lit it for him, the reporter asked, “What are your plans for your fantastic winnings, Hunny?

And what about work from now on? Are you planning on keeping your job at BJ’s Warehouse?”

Spraying smoke and droplets of champagne at the reporter, Hunny yelped, “Girl, are you kidding? I’ll miss all my friends at BJ’s. In fact, I’ll probably give them each a million dollars when I kiss that freakin’ zoo goodbye. But me get up and drive out there at six in the morning five or six days a week anymore? No, no, no, no, no, no, no!”

“So then,” the reporter said, “are you planning on giving away a large portion of your newly acquired fortune?”

“Oh, sure,” Hunny said. “Why not? There’ll be plenty to go around. Art and I will probably have some work done on the house…”

“Yeah, like blow it up!” somebody yelled, and this produced more laughter.

“And Art was reminding me just the other day that we need four new tires on the Explorer…”

Now a man who had been part of the kick line was being CoCkeyed 5

nudged forward by other celebrants, and we recognized him from earlier in the report. The reporter said, “And here is somebody else who may have his own ideas about what you can do with your billion dollars. This is Hunny’s partner, Arthur Malanowski. Art, please share your feelings with us on this momentous occasion.”

A grinning long-faced man with a red nose and thinning straw-colored hair, Malanowski moved tipsily but spoke clearly in a fluty baritone. “Well, dearie, we are going to have to talk to an attorney, and I guess to an investment advisor. Right now, though, we’re just going to party, party, party!”

“Art is the grown-up of the household,” Hunny said cheerfully, waving his champagne glass at his sweetheart and sloshing a bit of its contents onto Art’s green, blue, orange and yellow Hawaiian shirt. “But what I have to remind him of is that neither of us has to act like a grown-up ever again!”

“He’s pulling your leg,” Malanowski said chortling. “Hunny is basically levelheaded.”

Somebody in the room started chanting, “No, he’s not!” and others picked it up. “No, he’s not! No, he’s not…!”

Then they all cheered as Hunny said, “I’m gonna act just as grown-up as America’s all-time favorite billionaire, which means wherever I go there’s gonna be a Pontiac under everybody’s seat from now on!”

Timmy said, “Uh oh.”

Suddenly looking a little more sober, Malanowski said,

“Hunny is well known for being generous, and I’m sure he will continue that. But in a kind of organized way. Maybe like Paul Newman. A foundation or whatever.”

“Artie, luv, you are my Paul Newman,” Hunny crooned, and planted a big wet kiss on Malanowski’s cheek. “And I’m your Bea Arthur!”

“Hunny, Paul Newman wasn’t married to Bea Arthur.”

“Yes, he was!” Hunny insisted, and another chant broke out all around the room — “Yes, he was! Yes, he was!” — before 6 Richard Stevenson

trailing away into raucous laughter.

The TV reporter asked, “How long have you two been a couple? I get the impression it’s been quite some time you’ve been together.”

“Oh, girl!” Hunny sang out, waving his arm and flinging an inch of cigarette ash onto the reporter’s blue jacket. “Arthur and I have been lovebirds since before you were even born. We’re not actually legally married, what with the State of New York still futzing around on the subject of gay marriage. But the reality of the situation is, we are already so married — the way we depend on each other and all — that we could give a rat’s ass what all those closet queen politicians do or don’t do.”

“But we would like to make it legal,” Malanowski said. “Just to show that we’re as good as anybody else.”

“And to make sure you’re in Hunny’s will,” somebody yelled, but this produced only scattered guffaws.

“Well,” the reporter said gamely, “like a lot of married couples, you two do seem to have quite a bit in common.”

“You bet we do,” Hunny said. “For example, we both like having buckets of money drop out of nowhere all of a sudden, ha ha ha!”

Malanowski added, “You bet we both like money. After all,”

he sang, almost in tune, “mon-ey makes the world go ‘round…

the world go ‘round…the world go ‘round…”

There were cheers again, and Hunny added, “Money, yes, you bet, but don’t forget boys! Boys, boys, boys!”

This led to more applause and then cries of “Bring on the boys! Where are the boys?”

Somebody yelled, “Put the twins on TV! Let’s get a little of the twins!”

The large black man reappeared in a voluminous pink satin blouse, and this time he was guiding the two identical youths wearing wAnt soMe? T-shirts into the center of the scene.

Hunny welcomed them by wrapping his arms around them and CoCkeyed 7

bellowing, “Everybody meet Tyler and Schuyler. These are our pool boys! Aren’t they adorable?”

The two comely lads stood looking goggle-eyed and twitchy, and plainly under the influence of a controlled substance.

The reporter was beginning to look uncomfortable now and glanced off to the side, maybe at her producer. She said to Hunny

— and then immediately looked as if she wished she hadn’t said it — “But you don’t have a swimming pool, do you, Hunny?”

“The boys may have misplaced it. They’re easily distracted,”

Hunny said, and this elicited a mixture of laughter and boos around the room. Tyler and Schuyler gawked into the camera.

“Anyway,” Art said, “maybe we’ll have a pool put in tomorrow.

The Luntzes, up the street, have an aboveground pool, and we know there’s room for one of those out back.”

“We have to wait until we actually get our hands on the money,” Hunny explained. “We’ve decided on the lump sum of a billion dollars instead of one billion, eight-hundred-seventy-two million spread out over twenty years. I mean, I could croak in three years and so could the freakin’ state of New York.”