Free Guy Noir and the Straight Skinny by Garrison Keillor

you’ve always admired about the Midwest is the prevalence of trust. People count on each other here.”
    “Oh, go soak your head,” says me.
    “It’s true,” said the conscience. “Your pig farmer, for example. A truck pulls up to the pen, and the farmer herds a truckload of pigs off to be slaughtered. He doesn’t count them or weigh them. He may not know the truck driver, but he gives him a check to cover transportation, and the driver goes off with the livestock. Pure trust. A handshake and a wave. A week or two later, he gets a check from the buyer, whoever that may be. No IDs are checked, no bonds posted, no ten-page contract signed and notarized. This is a culture where a person is trusted unless he proves untrustworthy. When you cheat, you are vandalizing something beautiful.”
    “Bad example,” says me. “I’m the pig being loaded on the truck, and I’m trusting the driver to take me to an amusement park to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl and instead a guy is going to fire a bolt into my forehead and slit my piggy throat.” I sat in my office, staring at the telephone, telling myself
Do it. Call L.B.
as my fingers walked toward the keypad, and then they walked away, and then my iPhone dinged, and it was a text message from Naomi.
     
    Darling, I know it’s unfair, leaving you to guard the chicken coop against the coyotes while I am gallivanting around Dallas, with Santa Fe, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlantic City, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, Omaha, St. Louis, Honolulu, Houston yet to go, and let me tell you: it’s unfair and I love it. When your book is number one, you don’t ever have to eat out of vending machines. You are cosseted and cared for, driven around in Lincoln Town Cars with leather seats by polite young men in uniform who leap to open the back door for you, you are housed in boutique hotels with French names, and whisked up in small private elevators to suites with real paintings on the walls, suites right out of Hotel Beautiful magazine, where English matrons in starched linen uniforms run you a hot bath and an hour later a Jamaican gentleman in black tie and tails serves you a Sauvignon Blanc and morsels of Sevruga caviar on quail’s eggs on toast points, while a girl named Simone fluffs your hair and paints your nails, and Ingrid your masseuse is kneading your shoulders, and your personal pianist Phillipe is rendering your favorite Gershwin, and Ariadne your aromatherapist is spritzing you with narcissus, sassafras, and cinnamon. Darling, I can never go back to the squalor of academia, the dusty offices, the dreary classrooms reeking of indifference, the horrors of the cafeteria. Nor can I return to Minnesota where everyone is expected to suffer and if you don’t, they will see to it that you do. I am much much too happy. Meanwhile, our little business enterprise is going like a house afire, mon amour. Fabulous word of mouth, sales exploding daily, and guess what? The filmmaker Michael Moore has lost 100 pounds on the pill, and now he has a workout video of himself in bikini briefs doing exercises to old labor songs. It’s called Solidarity Aerobics. Isn’t that cute? I’m on a book tour for a couple months, soaking up the critical acclaim and the phenomenal sales numbers, but I miss you desperately. There is a guy missing from my life and it is you, darling. Do keep the second week of June free, and let’s drive north to Lake of the Woods, where my cousin Will has a cabin on a heavily wooded island that is not within sight of any other island. A one-bedroom cabin with a commodious bed and a sauna just big enough for two, and I think we could make a memorable weekend.
    I checked my calendar, and the second week of June was completely free. As were the first, third, and fourth. And that was that. The prospect of sitting naked with Naomi was what moved me to call up Mr. Larry and say, “No deal. Forget it. Ixnay. No can do.”
    “Okay,” he said. “Then I will