Free I Smell Esther Williams by Mark Leyner Page A

wished she could have spent an evening with the jailhouse rocker.
    THE DAUPHIN : The action would include some inspired pussy humping and crotch rubs that would burn your eyes out.
    VIC PIANO : Right off the bat, people will say “there’s good fucking and bad fucking.” Why let them go on and on and on and on and on and on, their penises sliding into their vaginas. Fucking.… there are so many ways of thinking about it. Here’s the worst fucking list of doctors I ever saw: Dr. Bernard Schulman, Dr. Irvington Solomon, Dr. Theodore Martens, Dr. Craig Bushel, Dr. Sally Bloom, Dr. Richard L. Lumis, Dr. Peter Sibel, Dr. Theoharis Ariola. It’s always, “Dispose of his body, Ginger, and for crisakes Let’s Fuck!” They always want media attention.
    THE DAUPHIN : You put the carrot before the cart—my father used to promise them a girl-packed UFO show.
    VIC PIANO : These orchids I discovered nearly thirty years ago in certain forests of Burma. They occur at extremely rare intervals—traditionally only once in a century. From these orchids I have at last obtained, after twenty-five years of study, an essential oil which completes a particular formula—the formula elixir vitae for which the old philosophers sought in vain.
    THE DAUPHIN : What a story! A beautiful stranger warns the 100 that she intends to track them down single-handed! What a scoop it would be to discover who she is!
    VIC PIANO (pouring the men hefty glasses of local cognac, giving them steaming bowls of homemade soup, and heaping their plates with meat): You’d only be writing her obituary! She hasn’t a chance against the 100! Those hoods have a finger in every racket in the area!
    THE DAUPHIN : Simmer down! Johnny Adonis, the convictedmurderer scheduled to die in the electric chair tonight, wants you to see him in the death house, immediately!
    VIC PIANO : Can’t understand why!
    THE DAUPHIN (covering the microphone with his hand): It’s those little things that nag you.
    VIC PIANO : They nettle at you.
S CENE 4
    The setting is the same as Scene 2, though the sound of mopeds is not quite so thunderous.
    (When Wu Ch’i owned a restaurant, there was a cook who, before dinner, was unable to control his ardour. He advanced and fried a pair of dumplings and returned. Wu Ch’i ordered him to be beheaded. The maitre d’ admonished him, saying: “This is a talented cook; you should not behead him.”
    Wu Ch’i replied: “I am confident he is a cook of talent, but he is disobedient.”
    Thereupon he beheaded him.
    The son of the son of this hapless cook was VERNON .)
    It’s about four o’clock in the afternoon. Shadows begin to worm their way across the stage. A $600 stallion belt buckle holds up VERNON ’s trousers.
    LUCAN : I look older when I smoke. Don’t let my age fool you.
    THE DAUPHIN : How old are you?
    LUCAN : I was launched in ’51.
    VERNON : You’re jerkin’ him off, toots.
    THE DAUPHIN : No—how old are you?
    LUCAN (heatedly): 22!!
S CENE 5
    A hotel lobby.
    DEBORAH sits across the couch from JUDY who is folding a section of newspaper. The couch is badly in need of reupholstering.
    JUDY (reading from the paper): Octogenarians “Die” in Crash. Peter J. Reichwein, 82 years old, and his wife, Lois, 82 of Wayne, were “killed” yesterday when their car crashed into a slow-moving train at a crossing. Due, in large part, to the miraculous speed with which they were delivered into surgery, doctors were able to revive the New Jersey couple after two hours of confirmed forensic “death.” Interest heightened amid reports from attendant hospital personnel that a voluble and robust Reichwein later recalled the experience of participating in this exchange at the instant of “expiration”: “What do you mean bringing a platinum cutie into a respectable establishment like this?” “Platinum cutie!!! Men, surround this oaf! Make it so champagne bubbles will never tickle his nose again!! Fix him so another wax dame will never make him