Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny by Keillor Garrison

Author:Keillor, Garrison [Keillor, Garrison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2012-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

12

Getting lucky

SO SUGAR THOUGHT I WAS the handsomest, sexiest man in Minnesota. She who had often in the past addressed me as “Lard Ass.” In general it had started to dawn on me that I was indeed becoming rather gorgeous. My size L shirts were billowy, and I was tucking in the tails, not leaving them hanging out as I had in my spare-tire days. The 38 waists were sagging on my hips—which now were bony, not humps of flab—so I switched to 36, a little snug but not for long, and by June I was a 34. My chins didn’t wibble-wobble when I shook my head. Even my earlobes seemed skinnier. Women in coffee shops gave me the eye who had never eyeballed me before. Several women in their twenties flirted with me. Brazenly. Sidled up on the street and asked for directions to the Cathedral but in a way that suggested they’d be glad to skip the Cathedral and accompany me to a bar for a cool drink and some frank conversation. Soon I needed a belt to keep up the 34s and was looking at 32. I felt weaker, the worms made me queasy when they got jumpy. And ever so often I let some thunderous farts, big boomers that smelled like deceased penguins. But I was turning into a show horse. Definitely. I was in better shape than when I was seventeen and graduating from Ira R. Globerman High School on West End Avenue. Back then, thanks to high metabolism, I could pack away eleven hot dogs at a sitting, and now tapeworms gave me all the metabolism a man could want. I was doing forty sit-ups at one sitting and almost fitting into a 32-inch waist and wearing skimpy briefs to show off my tight glutes. Not bad for an old man.

My landlady, Doris, noticed my slenderness. She, who took a quasi-spousal interest in my comings and goings, said, “You’re looking rather skinny, Mr. Noir, hope that doesn’t mean you got some sort of wasting disease and one day we’re going to detect a powerful stench and the cops have to break down your door and there you are on the floor in your skivvies and your body bloated and your glassy eyes staring up at me. It takes a long time to get the smell of a dead body out of an apartment, and even then they’re hard to rent, so if you’re about to croak, I’d rather you go out in the street and save me the headaches. Or when you sense the end is near you could dive off the High Bridge. You hit the water, it’s as good as hitting concrete. How about it?”

I assured her that I had plenty of shelf life left, but she wasn’t buying it.

“I’ve seen it before—there was a gentleman named Hobbs who tried to lose weight on a diet of bran flakes and mothball crystals. He played piano in the lobby of the Lowry Hotel and everything he played sounded like ‘Till There Was You.

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