Victoria thought she understood: Too much of a good thing could
be a bad thing; too many songs, too many pictures—the more there
were, the less they were worth, until you had to purchase a hundred
just to equal what was previously contained in one. For some crazy
reason which she could not figure out, when it came to products and
purveyors of the spirit, more had somehow become less.
“So let me get this straight, hon,” said Vic, “Every man I’ve ever
known took more from me than I got in return. Some left me blue. A
few, black and blue. Those are all subtractive colors, right?”
Madame Jewel placed her bejeweled hand on top of her friend’s.
“The human race may very likely be screwed,” lamented the
medium.
“Amen,” replied the aging Madam.
A few hours later Vic resumed her place behind the bar and poured
herself a glass of Jack Daniel’s with Tabasco sauce. She sat on her
stool and stared vacantly at the torn record album posters on the
wall. A picture of Deaf Lemon Hopkins mutely returned her gaze.
“Dang, Vic. What’s the matter?” said one of the truckers. He was
still seated at the bar and had been nursing the same beer for nearly
three hours. “You
never
drink no more. Was that loopy feller too
rough with you?”
“No, Cleatus. He didn’t touch me. It was more something he told
me.”
“Oh, one of
those
. Liked to talk dirty, huh?” The trucker nodded
knowingly.
“No you fool. It wasn’t like that,” she said. “Shoot. It was,
well…remember the time you transported that load of stolen goods,
and then the cops stopped you and you almost went to jail?”
“Yeah,” said the trucker sorely, “I remember. I didn’t know it was
stolen.”
Vic continued, “But then it turned out that it was all medical
equipment stolen from that hospital. And two heart patients died
because they needed some machines that were in your truck.”
“Are you going somewhere with this, Victoria? Or you just trying
to ruin this fine evening?”
“Well just let me know something, hon,” she softened her tone.
“How did you feel when you found out that you were responsible for
some poor folk dying?”
The trucker looked blankly into his flat beer. “It wasn’t my fault,
H O L Y S H I T !
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