Cockeyed

Начало книги

The first time I laid eyes on Art Malanowski and Hunny Van Horn was the day Hunny won the first New York Lottery payout of one billion dollars.

Normally Timothy Callahan and I are settled in bed and ready to be cheered up by Jon Stewart at eleven, and then we try to stay awake for Colbert. But a colleague of Timmy’s in Assemblyman Lipshutz’s office phoned earlier and urged Timmy to catch the Channel 13 news at eleven. He said, “You’ve gotta see this to believe it,” but refused to say what it was.

So we tuned in, and even before Hunny spoke, I said, “I do believe I detect what Johnny Carson used to call a hint of mint.”

“And then Ed would guffaw and say, ‘I’m not touching that one with a ten-foot pole!’”

“And Johnny would get that look, and say, ‘Mmmnn, a ten-foot pole!’”

“And the audience would crack up.”

I said, “Don’t you miss those days?”

“Nah.”

A female reporter looking fresh out of communications school was doing a live stand-up outside Art and Hunny’s house on Moth Street in Albany’s North End. With its tar-paper-shingled front porch and aluminum awnings on the two second-story windows, Art and Hunny’s place looked a good deal less minty than Timmy’s and my Crow Street townhouse, with its Albany Historical Society bronze plaque next to the front door and the discreet rainbow stickers on half the Toyotas and Subaru Outbacks parked legally up and down the block. But the house on the television screen was in the old working-class North End, where predictability was harder to come by.

Читать дальше →