The Shell Scott Sampler by Richard S. Prather

going to admit they knew Al. He trained his one true loves well. They weren’t going to talk about Al. Not much, they weren’t.
    â€œYou know who!” Ardith screamed.
    Then in one swift movement she reached out, grabbed the beach towel, and yanked. It
came free and Ardith threw it to the floor, pointed at Mrs. Otterman’s marvelous, jutting
breasts, pointed here and there and practically everywhere, and yelled: “ That Al,
that’s who!”
    Mrs. Otterman reacted automatically, I suppose.
    The towel had barely hit the floor when she threw her right arm way back and out as if reaching for the brass ring on a merry-go-round, then swung it forward and thwack! She got Ardith on the cheek and knocked her halfway across the room.
    But not down. Not down, and a long way from out.
    â€œEeee!” Ardith yelled, and charged at Mrs. Otterman. Sock, thwack! Slap!
    â€œMy Al!”
    â€œ Your Al? Why you —”
    Thwack!
    Friends, it was the battle of the decade. Maybe even the heavyweight championship of the century. It was glorious. Midway in the first round, Mrs. Otterman got one hand in Ardith’s red hair and another wound in her black dress and tried to yank them both off. She got the dress three fourths off, but couldn’t manage the hair, and by that time Ardith had kicked her in the stomach and knocked her flat on her back, going “Ooooph!” and gasping.
    It was a combination of boxing, slapping, screaming and wrestling, and I saw a few blows and holds that not even I—with years of unarmed defense, judo, aikido, karate and unnamed systems behind me—had witnessed or even experimented with before.
    Ardith lost the rest of her dress and finally was fighting to the death in a pair of black lace pants, which made it easy to tell her from Mrs. Otterman, who was wearing nothing except lots of Caress!
    The fight ended when Ardith hit Mrs. Otterman with a ceramic lamp, then fell, exhausted, to her hands and knees. Mrs. Otterman lay flat on her back, eyes slowly opening and closing, and saying, “Gug … ahp…”
    And then something sneezed, under the bed.
    Something? I smiled.
    â€œCome on out, Al,” I said.
    He came out—but not like a man defeated, dejected, surrendering. He came out in a hurry, his handsome face contorted with rage, frustration—and perhaps a sense of irrevocable loss. He came out, onto his knees, up in a hurry, and at me swinging his right hand.
    Even while swinging he got a glimpse of his two true loves in approximately equal states of nudity and sheer exhaustion on the floor, and he let out the cry of a wounded elk, then concentrated on knocking my block off.
    But he didn’t concentrate hard enough. And he shouldn’t have swung that right hand at me in the first place. In fact, he shouldn’t have swung any hand at me.
    It was a two-punch fight. His, which whistled by my ear as I bent my knees and pulled my head aside two or three inches, and mine which cracked on his chin with the sound of a baseball bat breaking.
    Then Alston was sprawled next to the wall, silent; Mrs. Otterman was gasping her last “Gug…” and trying to struggle to a sitting position; and Ardith was still on her hands and knees, breathing like a long-distance runner.
    I didn’t say anything for a while.
    I looked at Alston, at Mrs. Otterman, at Ardith. I took a good look, since perhaps never again would such a sight present itself to my eyes, and I wanted to remember every little detail, in case I should some day write my autobiography.
    Finally, having memorized all of Chapter One, clear up to the flashback, I said, “Well, girls, shall we now discuss this sensibly? Come, let us reason together….”

    * * *

    I caught up with Lupo—this time—in Dolly’s. Not at the Happy Time. Back where it had truly started. From Dolly’s, to the Happy Time, to Dolly’s again. But this was the really unhappy time