Category : Various Text files
Archive   : RUBYV35.ZIP
Filename : RUBY35-8
WITH A SONG IN MY HEART
A Ruby Begonia Adventure
Ruby eased off her shoes with an audible sigh and curled her
toes around the smooth lip of the brass spittoon.
"What'll it be, Ruby? The usual?" the bartender asked, one
hand already reaching for the bottle of Staggering Highlander
scotch secreted beneath the bar.
Ruby held up her bony index finger, the long, red lacquered
fingernail looking like a curved scimitar.
"Nah, Herm... just a single shot, neat, and..." she paused,
as if she were probing the edges of an idea rattling in her brain,
"let me have some onions and olives on the side."
"Onions and olives? Hell Ruby... that stuff is martini salad."
"I know, Herm, but the martini is the drink of the classy and
sophisticated, and I want to work my way up to changing my image."
"So?"
"So I'll start with the olives and onions now and get to the
gin and vermouth part some other day."
The bartender put several onions and olives that had obviously
seen better days into another shot glass and brought it over to
Ruby.
"What's the proper way to eat these things, Herm? Do I spear
them with a fingernail and pop them in my mouth, or what?"
"A toothpick, I think, Ruby. Let me see if I can find one
around here someplace. I don't get many calls for martinis and
such."
Herm rummaged around beneath the bar and then smiled
triumphantly.
"Aha... here's one," he said, brandishing a slightly soiled
and bent toothpick sticking out of a small wrapper that read "Pick
O' Mint Breath." He removed the toothpick from the wrapper and,
with great concentration, speared one olive and one onion on it.
"I think you're supposed to eat them in pairs."
"Thanks, Herm." Ruby took the toothpick while holding her
right pinkie finger in an elegant, slightly crooked position.
She took a small nibble out of the olive and then out of the
onion.
"Like that?" she asked. "Is that the way to do it?"
"Close enough, Ruby. Everything you do has class, so far as
I'm concerned," Herm replied, ignoring the sliver of brownish-green
olive wedged in the gap between Ruby's front teeth.
Pleased with herself, Ruby tossed back the shot of Staggering
Highlander in the wink of an eye.
"Oooops! Didn't mean to do that. I think it's supposed to be
more sophisticated to sip hooch. Gimme another, and I'll try
it again."
Herm refilled the empty shot glass, pouring the ounce and a
half he always gave one of his regulars.
"So what's with this sophistication stuff? he asked. "Your
image is OK with me. Always has been and always will be."
"Can you keep a secret, Herm?" Ruby asked, leaning forward
over the bar and revealing even more of her decolletage than usual.
Herm gulped at the display, suddenly aware of how many years
he had been tending this bar, with Ruby an original and regular
patron. He averted his eyes, simultaneously becoming aware that,
like Ruby, the bar top was showing the wear marks accumulated over
the years, the curtains were sagging on their bent rods, and the
booths were all scuffed and patched.
"Hell, Ruby. A bartender hears all and tells naught.
Especially me. You ought to know that by this time."
"It's Curt and Jackie's fault. You know they opened up this
high class bookstore down in Ft. Meyers a little while ago?
"Yeah... I heard about it. They'd been talking about it for
a long while, but I thought they were going to start a fish farm
in their backyard instead."
"Well, I went down there for their big opening celebration,
figuring I could make it an event that sleepy town would never
forget, and make "Syllables"... that's the name of the book
store... one of the town's real hot spots."
"I'll bet you did that, alright, if I know my Ruby."
"Nope. Didn't even raise an eyebrow. No, that's not correct.
All I did was to raise a bunch of eyebrows... you know, that sort
of sophisticated snooty look the intelligentsia like to give the
little people?"
"Jackie or Curt did that? I don't believe it."
"No, not them. It was the folks who came to the book store.
They were the snobby ones. They looked at me like I was some kind
of bug, and here I was dressed up in my classiest outfit."
"Errr... which one is that, Ruby?" Herm asked, his mind
remembering a few of the unusual ensembles Ruby had worn to the
bar in the past.
"My newest. Edith Head would have killed for a creation like
that. A halter top made from two zip-lock baggies, with skin-tight
red leather, stirrup bottom pants, and my favorite pair of six-inch
heels. It was to die for, if I say so myself."
"Sure sounds like it. How was everybody else dressed?"
"Jackie was all dressed up like Dame Mae Whittey doing a pub
crawl along the London docks. Curt looked like someone who was a
fugitive from the Golden Hind, with the scrawniest, ugliest, parrot
I ever saw sitting on his shoulder."
"Sounds like a real gala. What went wrong?"
"They had these trays of cheese and crackers and some of that
awful white wine. Personally, I would have served some wedges of
liverwurst, bloodwurst and salami with a couple of quarter kegs
of cold Shlitz beer. Anyway, I belted down a few glasses of wine
just to get my juices rolling and then figured the place could
use some entertainment. There was just too much polite chatting
and small talk going on for my tastes."
"What did you do?"
"Herm, you wouldn't have believed it. I thought the people
there were very literate and knew their stuff, but I was really
wrong."
Ruby tossed off another scotch and Herm refiled the glass
without comment.
"It was a book store. Right?" Ruby said, stabbing the olives
with the toothpick.
"Right!"
"People who go to book stores know all about literature and
poetry. Right?"
"I would guess so," Herm replied. "I mean... Right!"
"So how come they didn't know any of those limericks."
"What limericks, Ruby?"
"The ones I started singing."
"Like what?"
"Oh, you know, Herm. Hell, the old gang used to sit right in
that booth over there," Ruby pointed with the toothpick to an
oversized booth in the corner of the room, "and we would make up
some of the raunchiest limericks this side of a Victorian bawdy
house."
"Yeah... I remember," Herm sighed nostalgically. "That's when
Slats still had it upstairs and before Avenir hit it big with the
New York Times. Those were the days alright."
"I started out with a few of the old standards, like the ones
about the man from Nantuckett and the young lad from Kent. Then
I belted out a few more of my own creation. The people were so
quiet, I was sure I had that audience in the palm of my hand."
"Didn't you?"
Ruby sniffed and shrugged her shoulders. "I guess not all of
them. One of the ladies near me got all huffy and said, `Well, I
never!' So, I looked her right in the eye and said, `From the
sour look on your puss, that's a pretty damn clear fact, and it
don't look like you're ever going to get the chance to either.'"
"That was telling her, Ruby," Herm said, slapping the bar a
few times in appreciation.
"Who would have thought that scrawny, pinched-lipped witch
was the Mayor's wife and Chairlady of the Ft. Meyers Committee
on Decency, Morality and Literary Excellence?"
"You don't say?"
"Next thing I know, I'm hauled up in front of the local
magistrate and charged with public indecency, lewdness, and
performing without a license."
"Imagine that. They threw the book at you."
"Me, Ruby Begonia, treated like a common criminal. It was
humiliating."
"What happened then?"
"Curt and Jackie put up the hundred dollars bail and gave me
an express bus ticket home."
"You jumped bail?"
"Sure did. Now I'm a fugitive, just like Harrison Lincoln."
"You mean Harrison Ford, don't you?"
"Yeah... whatever."
"All's well that ends well, I guess... except I don't
understand what all that has to do with olives, onions and changing
your image."
Ruby tossed down her scotch and ate two olives and an onion
before answering. "I'm going to be a chanteuse. I'm going to
dress up in all my best outfits, sit on the edge of a piano in a
high-class cabaret, sip martinis, and sing my limericks for big
bucks."
"How about that! Where?"
"Coldwater, Michigan. Where else? I'll be a big hit. The toast
of the town."
Herm was aghast. "Ruby, that sounds like a real jerkwater
town. You must be kidding. Why would you go to a place like that?"
"I've been thinking of tossing in some stand-up comedy
routines as well, so I want to polish up my act before I bring it
into a big city like Ft. Meyers."
"You mean you would go back there? Wouldn't they arrest
you again?"
"Probably, but think of all the free publicity I would get."
"Ruby, you're one of a kind!"
"You said it, Herm. Say, want to hear me sing a few limericks?
Fix me up one of those gin martinis, and I'll rehearse a few for
you," Ruby said, jumping up to sit on the edge of the bar.
Before Ruby could turn around, Herm hurried to slip a bunch
of bottles under the bar.
"Aww, gee, Ruby. I'm fresh out of gin. Maybe some other time."
END
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