17

TOMMY AND MARIE planned a small cousins' club meeting for the Sunday family day activity. The house was spotless. Marie broke out the teakwood lazy Susans, filled them with potato chips, pretzels, Brazil nuts, silver-foiled chocolate kisses, Snowcaps, assorted miniature Hershey bars (nuts, no nuts, crunch and semisweet). She laid out the special cocktail napkins with the dirty jokes and big-titted women on them and even took the vinyl slipcover off the couch. Tommy displayed the liquor, bottles of Seagram's, Canadian, Wilson's, Cherry Heering and Early Times. He lined up the bottles beside an army of glasses on a white cloth he draped over the dining room table. He filled three silver ice buckets to the brim and loaded a tall, smoked glass with a fistful of wooden swizzle sticks carved in the shape of big-breasted Ubangi women. An old-fashioned glass held lemon slices and another maraschino cherries. The glasses had a woody smell, because they had spent the last year inside the huge liquor cabinet since the last cousins' club gathering hosted by the De Cocos. As a final touch, Tommy replaced the toilet paper in the john with a roll he had bought in a novelty store. It had dollar bills printed on it with oval portraits of a cross-eyed George Washington. Under each dollar was the legend "It's only money." When the cousins started arriving Tommy greeted them at the door wearing a gorilla mask he picked up with the toilet paper. Among assorted shrieks, giggles, gasps and "Hiya, Tommys" an eighty-year-old great-aunt in a wheelchair fainted when Tommy bent to kiss her at the door. They revived her with a shot of Cherry Heering. Tommy, Albert and Stony wore identical sky blue Banlon shirts—a shopping coup of Marie's. Stony bitched and moaned about the party, but as always, when relatives started arriving, he felt a strange thrill in his guts. He loved all the big mouths, morons, assholes and scuzzy aunts, no matter how much he poor-mouthed them to his friends—this was his blood. He especially got off on his aunts and uncles marveling at his good looks, how much he looked like his old man.

After the ordeal of hugging, kissing and handshaking was just about over, Chubby cornered him by the bar. "Oh, yah so cute! Don' he juza looka lika he faddah!"

Stony laughed.

"C'mere." Chubby grabbed his arm. "Inta the bedroom, I gotta talk to you."

Chubby ushered him through the crowds. They had to joke, laugh and kiss half a dozen women before they made it to the bedroom. Chubby closed the door, partially sealing off the noise. "Whew! I gotta hand it to yer folks, I never would have all these animals up at my place."

"Just wait, you're next. What's up?"

"Nothin', I just wanted to shoot the shit for a while. So, ah, how's your love life?"

"Whatta you, an Ultra-Brite commercial?"

"No, I just heard you broke up with Cheri." Chubby picked up a copy of Jaws from Stony's desk. "This any good?"