As she rides by

thereabouts. S. Silvetti had risen (imperceptibly) in my estimation because she’d loved the movie and had been repeating lines from it ever since—“So! They call me Concentration Camp Erhardt, eh?” being for some Freudian reason her particular favorite. As I’d had the foresight and generosity to stop on the way back from the movie at a booze store, where I’d loaded up with beer and Coke and a selection of those stubby little bottles of already mixed cocktails you can get nowadays, we were proceeding to get even festiver.
    Phineas regaled us first with his tale, which was short but satisfyingly sweet.
    “Is there anything tackier than Santa Monica Boulevard in the midafternoon?” he began. “In fact, is there anything tackier than Santa Monica Boulevard period? If there is, it is the lobby of a gay porno movie house on Santa Monica Boulevard , which must be the ultimate depressant.” Easy to tell he’s never read any of Sara’s poetry, I thought to myself. “But duty called, and, metaphorically, I can assure you, I girded up my loins, purchased mon billet, and, clutching my vial, my test tube of who knew what dangerous and toxic substances, slunk into a seat in the last row. The film began suddenly, without warning, like a tropical deluge, no Movie-Tone News, no cartoon, no trailer even. Suddenly they were all at it, my dears, from all directions. Following instructions, I made my way casually to the gents’. Was there a ladies’ room as well? I did not notice. If there was, would the signs that announced their presence have read, ever so cutely, ‘Kings’ and ‘Queens’? We shall never know.”
    Here he paused to take a delicate sip of his dry martini, after which he shuddered gracefully. “Absolutely horrid,” he said. “The bathroom was, fortunately, deserted. On went the loathsome rubber gloves. Out of the vial I extracted one of the two gelatinous capsules, which was approximately the size of one’s little finger. I pierced it with a safety pin, and immediately, if not sooner, flushed it down the sink using the hot water tap. Then I did the same in one of the three adjoining stalls, and again flushed, only this time down the toilet. I then returned to my seat, sans gloves.”
    “ ‘Sans’ means ‘without’ in Spanish,” I whispered to the twerp.
    “Twenty minutes later, I arose and, without a backward glance at the astonishing length and girth of our hero’s weapon, departed with a sigh of relief and a twinge of sadness for my fellow human being. Only one question remains in my mind—what the naughty-four-letter-word-that-starts-with-F was I doing?”
    “Yes, what was he doing, Willy?” his somnolent brother roused himself enough to ask.
    “He was putting a type of phosphorus trichloride in the plumbing system,” Willy said, grinning through his bushy black beard.
    “Which is not like putting a fluoride in toothpaste,” I said to Sara. “Bet you anything.”
    “Which substance burns in water,” Willy said, “mighty fiercely indeed, especially when warmed by friction or an acid.”
    “Or hot water,” Sara said.
    “And as most plumbing these days is plastic, not lead and copper anymore, that cinema’s whole plumbing system right out to the mains will have more holes in it than Wade’s socks by now,” Willy said. “Oh. The trichloride part means there’s a chlorine base involved, and we all know what that smells like. Remember World War One?”
    “Vic probably does,” Sara said.
    “Chlorine gas? Same sort of thing, but I only gave them the merest whiff.”
    “Speaking of whiffs,” Wade said, “wait’ll you hear what we hit the mothers with.”
    “I am impatience itself,” Phineas said. “Can I have another of these disgusting things?” I got him a refill from the midget fridge out back, and also another beer for Benny and Wade and a third margarita for Willy and a refill of some coconut rubbish for Sara, taking the occasion to top up my own brandy and ginger.
    When I was seated behind my desk once more, Wade said, “Concentrated parfum de dog shit.”
    “I beg your pardon?” I said. “Remember there’s a lady present, sort of.”
    “Friend of Willy’s makes it,” Wade said. “He lives in a fabulous Frank Lloyd Wright house in Echo Park .”
    “He’s all chemicals,” Willy said from where he was sitting on the floor next to King. “Looks like it, too. Me, I’m strictly mechanical. And philosophical, of course. He makes stuff like instant