Free Closet Case (Robert Rodi Essentials) by Robert Rodi Page B

interruption.
    He looked at the book, and despite its close adjacency to his face he managed to make out the word AUTOGRAPHS on the cover, rendered in a lovingly elaborate script. Aunt Ramona flipped it open to a random page.
    “Charles Nelson Reilly,” she said proudly, presenting a signature for him to appreciate. He leaned back in his chair, but Ramona just moved the book along with him. “He was in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir on TV, remember? He also played, he also played the major banana in that old Bic Banana commercial you used to laugh at when you were a boy. I got this, I got this from him when he was at the mall judging the Miss Western Springs pageant. And here,” she said, pointing to another stapled-in inscription, “Maria Ouspenskaya, who was a Best, who was a Best Supporting Actress winner sometime in the forties, and who was also in all those Wolfman movies I never let you watch. I got her when she was doing dinner theater in Evanston about forty years ago. Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit, which closed after a three-day run because nobody went to dinner theater in Evanston in those days, and besides who on earth, who on earth could understand that accent? And here —”
    “Ramona!” the colonel barked. “Get that ridiculous artifact out of my son’s face! You’ll suffocate the boy!”
    She clicked her tongue, shut the book, and tucked it under her arm. Then, hoisting a shoulder at her brother, she turned to her nephew and said, “Honey, would you please see if you can get Franklin Potter to sign this for me? And Helena Clement too, if she’s there. I’d be so grateful.”
    “Ramona, sit down,” Colonel Frank commanded, tossing his napkin down before him in a tiny spate of fury. “Get a grip on yourself. You can’t ask the boy to go loping after film stars like some prepubescent girl. You shouldn’t be acting that way yourself.”
    Greta picked at the hole in the knee of her Lycra tights and said, “Only the Lord Jesus Christ is worthy of our worship, Aunt Ramona.”
    Ramona squinted at her and said, “Young lady, no one said a, no one said a word about worshipping them.”
    The girl pulled at a thread and watched as it unraveled, leaving a web of neon Lycra just below her kneecap. “But the adoration you have for celebrities,” she said, her voice as dispassionate as the HAL 2000 computer on Quaaludes, “is too much like the adoration you should have for your Savior.” She belched.
    “There are different, there are different ways of showing love for God,” the older woman responded testily. She dropped back into her seat and placed the autograph book beside her on the table. “For instance, for instance, by keeping a clean and presentable appearance. Having good table manners. Embracing humility. I don’t need, I don’t need to be lectured on loving God by you, dear.” She was red in the face now, the blood showing bright beneath her thin skin, like the juice of an overripe tomato. She picked up her spoon and started to sup again.
    “The girl has a point, Ramona,” the colonel said with delighted smugness. “It’s unbecoming in a woman of your advanced years to behave so fanatically about these show-business prima donnas. Keeping a book like that is bad enough — but flaunting it, as though it were some kind of achievement, is beyond understanding. I’d have expected you to hide such a ludicrous habit, not display its accoutrements to your family as though it were a Purple Heart or something.”
    Ramona said nothing, but Lionel saw her artfully take her napkin, pass it lightly across her lips, then drape it over the spine of the autograph book, where, just before it was obscured from view, Lionel could see written in blue marker, VOLUME 8: N-R.
    He grunted a laugh, then took up his own napkin and pressed it against his mouth, as if he’d merely choked a little. Then, feeling somehow endeared toward Aunt Ramona, and also feeling guilty for having to refuse her request, he