03/07/01

Started the day explaining to Cupcake what happened to me that led to me living there with Percy. When she saw that my bandages on my burns had gone more than a day without being changed she insisted on helping me. She said she noticed I was moving funny the first time she met me but wasn’t figuring it to be from being burned. I just thought it was from you being old, she says. I told her while she worked doctoring me the basic account on things. When she heard about the dog being missing, she insisted on going over to the farm right away with me to look for him. Before I know it I’m in her car riding to the farm. Then we’re hiking together all over the place. Me and Cupcake on a search and rescue mission.

I just think to myself, I sure hope Phebe’s at work. She sees me walking around the farm with this girl, who knows what she’ll think?

Then I think, who cares?

I show Cupcake the burnt out trailer and she says, Dude, I don’t know how you got out of there!

Then she tells me she has an old Winnebago she inherited that needs to be removed from her uncle’s property up in the Catskills. If you let me keep it here, I’d let you use it to live in until your insurance comes through.

I don’t know what compelled me to say this, but I say to Cupcake with a wink, I don’t know about that idea, Sweetheart---if I ever got inside your Winnebago, I may never want to leave.

Just then Phebe showed up, killing the whole buzz. She sure looked pissed. She didn’t give Cupcake an ounce of consideration.

This is Percy’s neighbor, I say, she came to help me look for the dog.

Tommy didn’t call you? Phebe asks, cold as ice. The dog is dead.

Well now the buzz is really gone. I’m looking all kinds of hot to Cupcake now with quivering lips and tears streaking down my cheeks.

Talked a bit with Tommy‘s son. He showed Cupcake and I where he buried the dog. I looked over and Cupcake has got tears streaking down her face and a quivering lip too. We started back to the duplex when Cupcake proposed taking a drive up to Phoenicia just then to look at the Winnebago.

You don’t have to agree to anything, but maybe you can tell me if it’s road-worthy. I have to get that thing ready to move somewhere.

So we drive up to Phoencia to look the Winnebago over. She spends at least a half hour of the ride discussing in precise detail the varied nasty looks Phebe shot her and each of their meaning. You know, I really think she could be a murderer, she says. At one point at the camp Cupcake pops a squat and takes a piss. I’m not more that 15 feet away looking over the Winnebago’s radiator, which apparently leaks pretty good too.

I thought of that bed inside the Winnebago and then I thought how much an old fool I’d seem to Cupcake to mention it.

That bed inside sure looks like a comfortable place for an old guy to take a nap , I manage somehow to say.

Oh my God! Cupcake exclaims as she looks at her watch, My date! I forgot all about the date Percy set up!

They say there’s no fool like an old fool. Surely indeed.

So we rush back on the Thruway. Cupcake’s a half-hour late when we arrive. Cupid Boy is standing outside her door looking all kinds of bewildered. Cupcake introduces me to him assuming we’re strangers. He plays along. Nice to meet you, he says.

Don‘t I know you from somewhere? I ask.

No, he replies nervously, no, I don’t believe you do.