Baby, Would I Lie?

3

“There isn’t any there there,” opined Harry Razza, standing at the intersection of routes 76 and 165, where, beneath a nonfunctioning traffic light, a brown-uniformed deputy sheriff pinwheeled and pirouetted, directing endless lines of slow and patient pachydermic traffic on and off and along the Branson Strip, where all the theaters and restaurants and family attractions baked in the summer sun.

“That was Winston Churchill, I believe,” Louis B. Urbiton suggested, trying to locate the source of Harry’s quote.

But Harry would have none of it. “Not a bit, old man,” he said. “Lord Mountbatten it was, in re Africa.”

Bob Sangster, the third member of the group, who had been watching the hyperactive deputy out there under the traffic light as though waiting to see him explode, said, “Dorothy Parker. Los Angeles.”

“Nonsense,” Louis B. Urbiton decided, and that was that.

The three men had apparently somehow annoyed their driver, the chap who’d been paid quite handsomely to deliver them from the airport up at Springfield to the Palace Inn in Branson. However it was they’d managed to put his nose out of joint, his revenge had been terrible. Instead of at any hotel at all, he had deposited them here at this intersection, had dumped their luggage from the trunk of his vehicle to the sidewalk, and had departed. And now, without transportation, without a native guide, left alone and friendless at this godforsaken intersection in the middle of the untamed wilds of America, what was to become of the Down Under Trio?

The Down Under Trio, as they were known to their coworkers, were all originally from Australia and had kept their slithery accents to prove it. All had once upon a time been journalists but now were employed by a scurrilous rag called the Weekly Galaxy, headquartered in a section of central Florida that looked — and was — even more godforsaken than this spot here, were that possible. The trio consisted first of Harry Razza, an aging matinee idol with thickly sculptured — and no doubt dyed — auburn hair, a remarkably untrustworthy narrow mustache, and the roguish smile of one who sees himself, despite all the evidence to the contrary, to be quite the ladies’ man. Second, there was Bob Sangster, a rangy, laconic, workmanlike fellow with a large nose and the unruffled manner of a paid-up union member. And finally, there was Louis B. Urbiton, oldest and usually drunkest of the trio, an indefatigable reveler and cutup with a deceptively mature and even bankerish mien.

Though not at the moment, in emergency conditions here at this intersection. “Something must be done,” announced Louis B. as he sensed the bourbon growing warm in the flask in his hip pocket, subjected to all these harmful rays of the sun.

“Ah, yes,” Harry agreed. “But what?”

“That fellow never gets tired,” Bob pointed out, nodding at the metronomic deputy.

The deputy had halted eastbound traffic on 76 to permit a lot of left turns here and there. “Let me see what I can do,” Harry offered, and approached a pickup truck in the stopped line of traffic, its cabin containing a man and a dog — the man driving — its bed empty. The dog’s window was open. Speaking politely to both man and dog, Harry said, “B’pardon. Do you know the Palace?”

Man and dog both glowered, reacting to Harry’s accent. The dog kept his opinion to himself, but the man said, “You a faggot?”

Harry recoiled, his mustache wrinkling. “Are you,” he demanded, “asking me for a date? The cheek!”

The man blinked. “What?”

“Next, you’ll want the dog in with us! What sort of place is this?” Without waiting for an answer, Harry turned about and made his way back to the sidewalk and his two compatriots, saying, “Perverts, would you believe it? In small-town America.”

The deputy had to wave at the man and the dog in the pickup a lot before they got their wits about themselves enough to drive away through the intersection. Meantime, Louis B. said, “Let me try next.”

“Be prepared for a shock,” Harry advised him.

The deputy had now stopped the northbound traffic on 165. Louis B. threaded through the turning southbounders over to a station wagon containing one woman and an indeterminate number of children — somewhere between four and seven. Producing from his clothing one of the many bits of false identification he kept on and about his person, he said, “Madame, I am, as you see, a journalist with the Washington Post, on an important assignment with my confreres over there, to—”

“Police!” screamed the woman.

“We are legitimate journalists, Madame, and—”

“Rape! Assault! Police!”

“Madame, intercourse with you of any kind is the furthest—”

“Children! Help!”

The children rolled down their window and gleefully threw a lot of candy at Louis B., most of it covered with lint. Some stuck to his clothing — for days — but most simply made stains, then rolled to the ground.

“Good day, Madame,” Louis B. said, lifted a nonexistent hat, took a jujube in the eye, and marched with dignity back to the sidewalk. “Not a friendly place,” he informed his team.

“Well, I’ll give it a try,” Bob said. Taking from his pocket a twenty-dollar bill, he stepped off the curb and raised both arms high above his head, the twenty stretched between his hands.

Immediately, a six-room mobile home driven by a gent of 127, with his 124-year-old wife in the copilot’s seat, slammed to a halt right next to them. The driver took his teeth from his pocket, popped them into his head, turned a white smile on Bob, and said, “Where you headed?”

“Palace Inn.”

“Climb aboard. You and your pals take the living room. Martha, give the boys some ice water.”

“Hospitality,” Bob murmured, turning over the twenty to the sweet-faced Martha. “It makes the world go round.”