Read Me and My Manny for Free Online

If anyone around here’s acting kinky, it’s you.”
    Actually, I knew better than to toss his accusation right back at him. Harry was as principled and proper as a stuffed shirt with a starched collar. It was unwise to tinker with his emotions.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, groping. “Let’s kiss and make up.”
    By way of punishment, Harry gave me the silent treatment.
    “This night, my first night at home,” he said at last, “and you prefer that goofy-looking dummy.”
    “That’s crazy.”
    “Okay, okay, just one thing.” He got up, whipped the top sheet off the bed, and threw it over Wolfs head. “That’s more like it,” he said, again snuggling next to me.
    “Wow, swabby. Permission to come aboard granted.” My amorous words indeed had the desired effect.

Publicity
     
    The next morning, I was preparing a cheese omelet for breakfast, when Harry came bounding back into the apartment with the newspaper clutched in his hand.
    “Half the tenants in the building are down in the manager’s office laughing their asses off over this.” He slapped the newspaper down on the table and jabbed his forefinger at two cowpokes in western outfits against the backdrop of a high school marching band. “Is that you?”
    I read my name in the caption beneath the photograph in the entertainment section, of all places, not on the front page as the reporter had promised.
    “Is that you, parading in front of a million people while tied to that dummy?”
    I examined the colored photo, struck that Señor Kin had appeared rather silly in his gigantic sombrero, but I doubted a million people had been on the parade route. Though after doing a rough calculation on how many saw us in the papers and on TV, a million got darned close.
    “It’s me all right. And I wished we’d been on horseback. Those clunky cowboy boots killed my feet.”
    Last Sunday, I along with Wolf had participated in Seattle’s Grand Parade, one of the many pageants that kick off the yearly summertime event Seafair. Insofar as life with a manny was still uncharted territory, I had figured that the July parade would be another opportunity for me to show Wolf to the public and get people’s reaction. Since we’d be traveling the parade route as a pair, with me in the lead of course, I needed to come up with costumes that were both colorful and coordinated.
    I dressed Wolf in one of Harry’s old plaid shirts that, however ill-fitting, went well with his bell-bottoms then I drove downtown to a western-wear shop and bought him a Mexican sombrero that engulfed his head like a flying saucer. For myself, I chose a “ten-gallon” cowboy hat. I couldn’t get Wolf’s painted-on deck shoes into pointy cowboy boots, so I settled on a set of spurs.
    Further, I favored a hank of rope to the holstered six-shooter, a rope that twirled nicely into a lasso secured around Wolf’s waist. As the final touch, I strapped a bandolier full of fake bullets across his chest and tied a red bandanna over his lower face.
    Likewise in western duds, with a glinty sheriff’s badge pinned to my chest, I used the lasso to pull the masked outlaw on his wheels through the streets of Seattle. That’s when the cheering crowds gave me another possibly lucrative idea. I could promote mannys to man floats in parades.
    Not being one to procrastinate, I never put off till tomorrow what I can screw up today, I had taken the opportunity to pitch my manny to a Seattle Times reporter. During the brief interview, he said the several pictures he’d snapped of us would appear on the front page of next Sunday’s paper. Though I eagerly awaited the publication, I regretted that Harry got the Times before I had a chance to.
    “I can’t believe that you and that dope on a rope actually marched in a kickoff parade. How would you like it if I went and had some inflatable copy made of you?”
    “I’d be flattered.”
    Actually an inflatable likeness of me—something I viewed as a gigantic balloon