Somebody Should Have Scolded the Girl by Paula Coomer

Author:Paula Coomer [Coomer, Paula]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fawkes Press
Published: 2019-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

CURLIE’S ALIBI

Question 1: Do peaches wear pillbox hats?

Question 2: Do Martian dogs chew sapphires?

Question 3: Does bacon sing Italian opera?

Question 4: Do podiatrists walk on tulip beds?

THIS IS JUANITA. Sometimes we call her J. A beautiful girl with hearing aids, scribbling on a napkin, in response to a bet that she can’t think of six questions no human has ever asked another human. She’s on number five, punctuating the air with her hands as she imagines aloud. Curlie interrupts her, says he’s willing to bet she can’t tell a story while stifling her fingers. Hito and I throw tens on the bar. Curlie follows suit. J says, “I’ll raise you ten,” and we all throw down again.

She tries, telling an old yarn about two French women who came to New Albany, Indiana, in the early 1800s, dreaming to open a restaurant for steamboat passengers, only to discover they’d each lied to the other about talent and funds, that is to say, they’d overstated themselves. What other choice did two enterprising women of that era have but to open a brothel and saloon, so that’s what they did, in an abandoned bank, in the exact place known today as Curlie’s Bar. Of course, as civilized as the new world was by then, the brothel part was a secret.

J loses the bet. She runs her fingers through her hair, which we count as foul, as she is wrapping up her story with, “New Albany was full of wealth, but you’d never know it today.” Her penalty is to buy a round of tequila shots for the bar, all of four people, including herself, Curlie, Hito, who is tending bar, and me.

J we have known forever. We went to school with her, and then she was a ‘Nam nurse early in the war, went to college a second time on her G.I. bill at the university over in Louisville and eventually became a divorce attorney. According to her, as of 1972, she was still the first and only woman divorce lawyer in Floyd County. She has been known to write stories about us and our town, which she sends out in the mail to high-brow brainiac magazines, hoping to get published, and when she does, Curlie sets her up at the microphone and she reads for everybody. It’s a comforting and intellectually stimulating endeavor, and one we all look forward to. When Curlie’s feeling flush, he puts an ad in the paper, but people come whether he does or doesn’t. Folks love her stories and keep on top of her goings on. To us, she’s funny, especially the more she drinks, and J, just like the rest of us, will string them together if a happy audience is buying.

“Don’t you see?” she says, a few sips of a whiskey on the rocks to her credit, “Two people talking and one asking questions that don’t make sense. Or, how about this? Take these four questions and make them into a game. What if each

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