The Spaghetti Western
Carol stood in the middle of the road and I couldn’t but gasp at the sight of her. Having decided to challenge our shadow face to face, she had done away with the brunette wig that kept falling on her face. ”What’s the bloody point with it anyhow, he’s going to recognize us the minute he sees us.”
Right now she looked abso-fucking-lutely amazing in her skimpy, partly torn dress that left little for imagination, her ample chest eagerly panting out of its generous opening like a pair of lost puppies… sweltering heat of the surrounding, sweeping landscape licked her love starved body… Biting her succulent lower lip she waited, her chest heaving with suppressed emotion as she watched me, her angel, transform into the gunslinger of her wettest dreams… mysterious Terez with a harmonica…
”For God’s sake, snap out of it, darling, this is a noir, not some tacky spaghetti western!” She could always sense what I was thinking. “It’s September and I’m wearing a friggin’ fur coat, not some Fuck-Me-I’m-Claudia-Cardinale outfit!” Carol complained impatiently. Yeah, my fantasy was getting out of hand, I realized and smiled sheepishly at her.
The man got out his car and approached us apprehensively. He was carrying something in his right hand. Actually, he seemed to be poking the ground with it... What!? He had black, round specs and a white cane!!! I exchanged glances with Carol who seemed just as surprised as I was. She slipped the Derringer back into her handbag.
Finally the man was face to face with her. “Hello, Miss Gerhard,” he said gravely. “Hello…” greeted Carol. “You’re blind!!!” I blurted out not quite as subtly as I’d hoped. Carol shot an angry glance at me. “Yes,” the man said. “But I’m not blind to the facts of the matter concerning my brother.” He grinned devilishly. “Your brother?” Carol asked genuinely surprised. “My name is Burge. Harge is my big brother.” The man leaned on his cane. “Burgess Lester Aird’s the name. “ I couldn’t help but snicker at the stupidity of his name. Carol rolled her eyes at me again. Hargess Foster has a brother called Burgess Lester – what the hell were their parents thinking about?
“What’s your business, Bur… Mr. Aird?” Carol inquired calmly. While they were chatting I got really disturbed by his blindness and couldn’t but interrupt them. “Excuse me but if you’re blind, who the fuck’s been driving your car? I don’t see anyone else in there…” I thought I made a perfectly valid point. Burge seemed slightly irritated by my remark. “My chauffeur, if you really must know. It’s hard to see him from here since he’s a dwarf.” Great, now we have ended in a bloody David Lynch movie…Please, please, let this at least be Mulholland Drive! We could end up having a foursome with Naomi Watts and Laura Harring… “Ther… Genevieve!!!” Carol exclaimed reading my thoughts again. Well, it’s not like I’m that into Lynch anyway – the only ‘twin peaks’ I’m interested in are lodged inside Carol’s blouse.
“Miss Gerhard, let’s cut the crap,” he said, “I may be blind but I can surely recognize a voice when I hear one. My eyesight might not be of use to me anymore but my other senses compensate for the lack of it.” Carol gave me a puzzled look. “And you, Miss Cantrell, you are the evil mastermind behind all of this, aren’t you?” I could have sworn I heard Carol suppress a laugh.
Suddenly irritated, I looked at Burge. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Burge Aird scoffed. “Let’s just say you know a lot more than you let one.” What the hell was he talking about? “You have done your best to obfuscate my brother’s plans with false information.” Carol scoffed. “Harge has nothing on my best friend,” she claimed trying her best to sound like Abby. Quite a useless effort, if you ask me, but Burge seemed just as clueless as his jerk of a brother. “Oh you think so? We happen to be in possession of a certain memory stick containing a set of very interesting photographs…”
I couldn’t believe what he was saying and kept nervously glancing at Carol. “…the contents of it are enough to make a seasoned streetwalker blush out of sheer coyness.” Yup, that’s Carol and me for you. “There’s not a judge in the world who would decide in your friend’s favor after having seen the appallingly garish evidence.” Appallingly garish? I thought they were beautiful, all of them a true testament of our love and commitment evident from the very beginning.
“I recommend you both return to New York immediately. The divorce proceedings will begin on Monday, and we may need to call you in as witnesses for Mr. Aird.” He made his exit and I briefly toyed with the idea of shooting both him and the dwarf with Carol’s gun. I felt sorry for the dwarf, though, he would’ve been just collateral damage and I didn’t have it in me. I didn’t have Carol’s gun either since she was clutching her bag quite ferociously at the moment.
“Carol…” I started when Burge’s car had left. “The memory stick – you did get rid of it, right?” Carol seemed to awaken from a stupor his news had put her in. “Well, not exactly… I just couldn’t.” Her smile was both lovely and apologetic. “I love those photos, they’re part of our story, darling, and the idea of destroying it was just too much for me.” At that very minute I loved her even more than I thought possible. “But I did bury it in the garden. It’s not like I had some lawn work ordered any time soon.”
“It seems we are screwed, though,” I concluded quietly. Carol took my hand and squeezed it reassuringly. “If it’s so, we’ll just have to make the best of it. It’s not like we’re ever going to be apart anyway.” I actually could love her even more than a minute ago, I realized.
“Darling, why don’t we go and find a motel and reenact some of those spaghetti western moments you had in mind?” Carol said rubbing my cheek tenderly. “Really? Yes!” I shouted out all excited. “We could do, say, at least Seven Hours of Gunfire and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly..?” I suggested wiggling my eyebrows. “Let’s make it Three Hours of Gunfire and The Good and the Bad”, Carol commented. “We’ll have to head back to New York at some point any way and I don’t think the ugly really applies in our case…”
As always, Carol’s point was right on the money. I thought we could have done The Relentless Four as well but for it we would’ve needed Naomi Watts and Laura Harring as well so I thought it better not to say anything about it at the moment.