Free The Danger of Being Me by Anthony J Fuchs Page B

you," she said sweetly.  "I'd rather eat cunt."
    Ben blinked and the corner of his mouth twitched.  He nodded toward Helen.  "Now that I would pay to see."
    "Wouldn't we all," Phil said tonelessly.  He turned to Ben and gave him a bored stare.  "Care to roll for turn?"
    Ben watched Phil's glare for one silent moment, then scooped the die out of the gamebox.  He gave it one hard shake in his fist, and cast it across the board.  It spun out near Helen, a lone snake eye staring at the ceiling.
    "How about that," Helen said, smiling as she picked up the cube and showed the single pip to Ben.  "One."
    Ben smirked.  "Yes, I see that.  Most inauspicious."
    "Somebody's been skipping ahead on his Word-a-Day calendar," she told him , and winked.  She flicked the die, watching it carom across the table, showing four.
    Winnie spun a three.  Ethan tossed next, and the cube rolled out again on a four.  Finally, I reached for the die, closed my fingers over it, and touched my free fingertips to my forehead, closing my eyes.  "Six," I said.
    I flicked the die across the board.  It clattered to a stop just before spilling off the tabletop onto the floor.  Half-a-dozen white pips stared unblinkingly up at the ceiling.
    Winnie looked at me.  "How do you do that?"
    I crossed my arms, leaned back with an amused grin.  "You know I'm wrong like 80% of the time, right?"
    I saw a grin crease Phil's lips as he pulled one of the teal boxes of question cards from the gamebox.  I tossed the die again, rolled a two, and moved my blue piece to the pink spot on the far spoke of the gamewheel.  Phil pulled a stack of cards, shuffled them rapidly, and looked up at me.  "What film features the lines: ‘Now, you got a corpse in a car minus a head in a garage.  Take me to it.'?"
    I cocked a finger at him.  "That would be Pulp Fiction ."
    He gave a curt nod.  "That would correct."
    Phil slid the card into the used end of the box.  I fished a pink pie-piece from the box and tucked it into one of the free spaces in my gamepiece. Then I rolled a three and slid my piece to the brown space at the bottom of the spoke.
    Phil pulled a new card.  "What U.S. city's zoo was home to 660-pound M'bongo and 683-pound N'gagi?"
    My brow creased as I considered the question.  I heard Winnie tell Ethan: "— had us free-write about which living author we would most like to have write our biography."
    "No contest," Ethan said.  "David Foster Wallace."
    Helen considered, nodded.  "You definitely strike me as a metamodern maximalist."  Then she looked to Winnie, "who did you write about as your ideal biographer?"
    "Maya Angelou," Winnie said.
    Helen smiled.  "Very nice."
    "Isn't she a poet?" Ben said.
    "Mrs. Kraven didn't say novelist ," Winnie explained.  "She said author .  And a poet is certainly an author."
    I grinned at that.  "I do appreciate a woman who takes her use of the English language seriously."  Then I turned back to Phil, and told him, "I wouldn't know the first thing about M'bongo and N'gagi if they took turns punching me repeatedly in the testicles."
    Phil smirked.  "Here's a hint: it's in the United States . "
    I considered, then shook my head.  "Toronto."
    "Incorrect." Phil tucked the card away. "It's San Diego."
    "Dude," Ben laughed.  "Toronto's in Canada."
    I waved him off.  "Canada's just a suburb of Detroit."
    "Except Quebec," Helen added.  "Fuck Quebec."  She picked up the die, gave it a curt shake, and flipped it back onto the board, rolling a one.  Ben snickered and Helen ignored him, sliding her pink piece onto a yellow space.
    Phil pulled a new card.  "What New Yorker headed the Senate Whitewater committee?"
    Helen didn't even hesitate.  "That's Jack McCoy."
    Phil looked over the card at her.  "That's incorrect," he said, tucking the card away.  "It was Alfonse D'Amato."
    Helen shrugged as Winnie asked her, "Who would you have write your biography?"
    Helen didn't hesitate.  "Ernest Hemingway."
    "Mrs. Kraven