Two Much! Read Online Free Page A

at once a Merry Christmas dropped into my head, and I laughed aloud. “Ralph,” I said.
    He looked up from the bridal announcements; Ralph reads everything in the Times . “Mm?”
    â€œOn the front,” I said, “there’s a drawing of a cute priest. Barry Fitzgerald. He’s smiling directly at us, with the caption, ‘Merry Christmas.’ And inside it says, ‘you Jew bastard.’”
    â€œMmmmm,” he said. “Won’t that offend some people?”
    â€œYou really think so?”
    â€œNot everybody is as sophisticated as you are,” he said.
    â€œOh, go long with you,” I said. I don’t know why I sounding-board Ralph; he has no more sense of humor than a yak.
    We separated at Perm Station, Ralph to cab downtown to the law firm with his homework, me to walk up into the bowels of the garment district My office is on the fifth floor of a building so infested with third-rate garment manufacturers I think of the place as an outpatient clinic for bankruptcy court. The regular elevator ceased to function during the Harding Administration, and this time I shared the freight elevator with a rack of thin floral dresses accompanied by a pair of four-foot-tall PRs. Hispanics , they prefer to be called, but most people use the abbreviation: spic .
    Gloria was at her desk, typing at her typewriter. “Look at the tan,” she said.
    â€œIt comes from the Tabasco in the bloody Marys.” I pulled the dress out from under my shirt and said, “Here’s a little something I bought you.”
    â€œYou bought me?” She held the dress away from herself with one hand, studying it without trust “If I wear it to work, will I get arrested?”
    â€œThink of it as a weekend dress. What’s that you’re typing?”
    â€œA letter to my mother.”
    â€œGood. I was afraid it might have something to do with the firm.”
    â€œWhat firm?”
    â€œNo double-entendres,” I warned her, and went back into my own room, which hadn’t changed much in my absence.
    My firm is Those Wonderful Folks, Inc ., and I do greeting cards. I create my own copy, farm out the illustrations, and am cheated by the printer and robbed by the distributor. My product, known as Folksy Cards, is distributed only in the Greater New York area, and pays just enough to make me ineligible for food stamps.
    My favorite cards are framed and mounted on the walls in my office. It inspires me to be able to look up from the desk and see the earlier emanations of my genius. “Kiss me again—I’ll turn the other cheek.” “We’ll have to stop meeting like this—roll over.” “Love is—never having to say, ‘How much?’”
    In fact, they inspired me again. I no sooner sat down at my desk than I grabbed pencil and paper and wrote. “Get well soon—my doctor says you have it, too.” That was two in one day, by God; taking a vacation really does help.
    Whistling cheerfully, I turned to the stack of memos on which Gloria had listed the incoming phone calls of the last few days, and what an honor roll of complainers and spoilsports unfolded there before me. Even the landlord, for the love of Christ. Jack Mulligan, my sister, Ed Frazee,
    Linda Ann Margolies …
    Linda Ann Margolies? I buzzed Gloria. “Who is Linda Ann Margolies?”
    â€œA sexy voice on the phone. Young and cuddly.”
    â€œGet her.”
    â€œMm hm.”
    â€œYou’re too cynical, Gloria,” I said, hung up, and finished throwing away the rest of the phone memos. Three calls from my ex-wife alone. If these buffoons overworked Gloria, she’d up and quit. Then there were Dave Danforth, Abbie Lancaster, Charlie Hillerman.…
    Hmmm, Charlie Hillerman. An illustrator with a very lewd style, he’d be perfect for the Get Well Soon. Unfortunately, I still owed him one or two fees for previous work, which-was surely