Wilbur by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

#22-Monty Moves

Since his two brothers had been gone, Monty had continued to become increasingly lonely by himself in the big house, despite his restoration of their mutually won Cheeseball trophies. That was substantially alleviated when he met Maggie, and they proceeded to hit it off, especially when they each quickly saw that the other was after something other than the other’s money and found Harlequin hilarious.

Maggie also came to find Monty’s house hilarious. “It’s absurd,” she often said. “It’s more like a rooming house, a hotel, or that of a basketball player with a rigorously extended family and lots of ‘long lost friends’ they wish would try to get re-lost, or at least get a job with potential.”

Monty didn’t disagree. For him, its attraction had declined to become a copious, often depressing, bad habit which stored memory baggage, completely unresponsive, even to a delete button pushed with all the force of an overweight sumo wrestler. In apparent defiance of the positive concepts of cool and “chill,”

slothfulness also played its stereotypical and inevitable roll in that Monty didn’t have to go through the inconvenience of moving to get there.

The near agreement and nearly identical point of view led to Monty and Maggie’s moving out. Maggie had been primed to

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belatedly get out of her overtime parent’s house, as pronto as possible.

In a matter of days Monty sold the “whale” at asking price to Mandel, the current Wall Street superstar seeking the appearance of Mayflower “status,” an open living room concept, and space for entertaining. On some level, it seemed eminently fair to allow the “crooked money maven” have his “dream” for the short time prior to his rest-of-life” incarceration in the one room facility with protectively barred windows.

Jointly with rights of survivorship, Monty and Maggie bought a smaller, eight room house in aesthetically pleasing Upper Darby Manor with frontage or a rearage on Upper or Lower Darby’s shared Reciprocal River.

That it turned out to border the property of “newcomers” to Upper Darby Manor, Cable and Barb, prior to actuality, had just as much likelihood as one buying a plastic trash bag worth $9,000,000 from a substance issued, homeless person. Accordingly such serendipity risked becoming expected. Religions have officially classified seemingly lesser events as miraculous. One teenage girl saw the Virgin Mary? Not to deride her visions, it does seem safe to say that thousands of teenage girls and boys have seen thousands of “visions” under the influence of Owsley acid. A number of accounts are now “documented” on YouTube, all replete with recently simulated visuals. Freely viewable,

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unrecognized “miracles” abounded in turned on and tuned in 2018, the missing drop out aspect a common delusion of high income techies at Google, Twitter, Tesla, et al; the male and/or female bald head derivations and “casual dress” perfectly acceptable at hipster bars, downtown punk hangouts, and corporate headquarters.

The trophies were again bagged and moved, this time properly surrounded by bubbly protective material. This travel had become such a regular event, that most of them assumed that they were on one of those group vacations. “If it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium.”

The “new” neighbors were initially as neighborly cordial, as neighbors are standardly expected to be. “A wave and a half smile prior to returning to one’s “business” characterized the repartee exhibited upon chance borderline meetings.

That continued until Monty, more or less satisfied with other aspects of his life, desired to extend his future boundaries into those which had passed, as he missed competing in the Cheese Rolling contests. He wanted a partner. A bit inebriated, he walked the shared post-and-rail fence, and eventually saw Cable in the vicinity. In a similar state, just

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to get some fresh air, Cable was pretending to be raking something which required no raking.

After the perfunctories, Monty called out; “Hey; you ever play any Cheeseball?”

Cable smirked while responding; “Funny you should ask that.

It’s probably not what you’re thinking, but ......... I do have some familiarity as a fan.“

“Ever think of playing? It’s pretty easy as all you have to do is keep your balance on the hill and run.”

They soon began to attend feral Cheeseball events together.

They didn’t cheat and didn’t ever win. They just enjoyed the nonsense. Barb and Maggie were sufficiently dexterous to not get hit by any errant cheeseballs.

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