Gary Wolf by Who Censored Roger Rabbit

Author:Who Censored Roger Rabbit
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-03-06T22:52:25+00:00

Chapter: •23•

I got back to my apartment just in time to spruce it up for my weekly poker game. Anything lying around loose I kicked under the sofa. I swabbed last week’s dried beer off my card table, cracked open a fresh deck of pasteboards, tossed some chips into a bowl, and threw three cases of suds on ice.

Billy Donovan arrived first. Billy was a construction worker who had drifted in from the deep South. He wore bulb-toed, clodhopper shoes, bib overalls, a gingham checked shirt, and a ratty straw hat. He sucked on a long shaft of barley grass from the shock his country kin included along with a Baggie of homemade grits, a plug of prime chawing tobacco, and a Mason jar of white lightning in their weekly Kentucky Special Care package. Whenever he won a hand, Billy slapped his knee and said “Aw, shucks.” On any given night he said it a lot. For a down-home hillbilly, he played a big-city brand of poker.

Next came Jess Westerfninster, the moneyed one of our group. Jess was descended from a long line of distinguished forebears. His great-great-great had crossed over from the old country on board the Mayflower and had been the guy who arranged to have the nation’s first Thanksgiving dinner catered by the ‘toons the colonists found living here. For this Jess’s ancestor got his name in the history books. Another of Jess’s relatives had imported thousands of ‘toons from China to build the nation’s first transcontinental railroad. They became known as the Yellow Kids and won that relative a spot in the history books, too.

The last person to arrive was Harry Wayne. Harry worked in a body shop and owned the snazziest set of wheels. It had started out life as a stock Chevy eight-stroker before Harry took over. He chopped and channeled the body, bored out the engine, recovered the seats, threw on a set of super-wide whitewalls, and traded a pound of hamburger to a ‘toon dragon for two flaming belches, which he glued to either side of the car just behind the front wheel wells. When Harry finished with it, that car went a hundred miles an hour standing still.

We cut for deal. I won and called spit in the ocean. Everybody anted up. I had just dealt myself my third king, and it was starting to look like one of those nights the gods smiled down on me, when I heard an ominous sound—a key turning in my front door. Right away I could see it coming, and come it did. The door popped open, and Roger Rabbit walked in.

Conversation around the table ceased. My buddies stared dumbfounded at the ‘toon rabbit standing in the middle of my living room carpet. Totally oblivious, Roger hopped jovially over to the card table, extended a fuzzy paw, and said, “Hello, I’m Roger, Eddie’s new roommate.” I could have crawled under the table and died.

Naturally nobody hustled to the front of the reception line. Billy

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