Happy As Larry

2. The Ticket

If Larry's feet had been given a chance to touch the oor his footsteps would have echoed off the alleyway walls, which, mixed with his heavy panting would have set the scene rather nicely. But Larry didn't have time for the niceties of art. Glancing suspiciously over his shoulder he dashed round bends, zoomed across streets, barrelled down side-roads and performed any other verbs you can think of to portray the speed in which he was rushing home. The poor fellow was in quite a state as he ducked through his front door, slammed it behind him, crashed straight into Mrs Larry, showered spaghetti all over the dog and created what he later thought was a rather Dali-like picture. "What ever is the matter!?" howled Mrs Larry, in unison with the dog. "Oh dear I've done the most awful thing." he replied, spying through the letterbox and simultaneously fending off the dog, which was now vexedly dangling off his belt. Indeed, Larry had robbed a bank. "I was only doing the crossword and..." he was explaining to Mrs Larry "...I went into the bank and saw it on the counter and I just took it, without thinking. Oh!" "Took what!?" And with shaking hands and guilty eyes Larry removed from his pocket a ball point pen. I believe there is no man more honest than our protagonist. Yes, he might be a bit lazy. Thoughtless maybe. Ignorant perhaps. He has a touch of forgetfulness and arrogance now and then. And he's stingy with cash. But honesty rises above all these lesser traits. Not everyone thought so of Larry though. "Did you hear" said one who didn't think so to another, "about the time with the Lottery ticket?" "No," said the other, "do tell."

"Shouldn't you be ready for work? Not everyone can just sit around all day." voiced Mrs Larry who had just started her rst job working as a product tester at SofaWorld and was nding every opportunity to remind an uninterested Larry of the exciting new fact. In truth, she'd only got the job to spite Larry, who prided himself with being the bread-winner of the household and found it the perfect excuse for avoiding most chores. He was looking for some lunch. "There's never any bloody bread in this house!" "I won't be back until tomorrow as I'm staying with friends." "...no butter." "So remember to feed Chuchi." "No ham." "And you'll have to cook your own dinner." "No ja..." the empty jar dropped from Larry's abbergasted ngers, hit his foot and sent him blundering across the kitchen, skidding on a mislaid pack of butter and landing him on Mrs Larry's lap. "Of course, I'll be just ne." "Also do a bit of tidying up - Smith will be coming round at ten to do the cleaning and I don't want him to see the house in a mess. And remember to get my lottery ticket, I won't have time myself, I'll be busy with my job." She handed Larry a tear of paper with some scribbled numbers on it and got up to leave. Larry begrudgingly took the note, putting it in his pocket. "Please remember, I feel good about this one, and you always forget." Larry felt rather insulted by that leaving remark. He always did his best to be a perfect husband, and

as far as he could remember he'd always had a top-notch memory. But he took this as his chance to prove it to her, there was nothing that could get in his way. The phone rang. "Hello, is that Mr Larry? I just wanted to ask you a few questions about-" "No you may not." and Larry put down the phone, muttering to himself about people having nothing better to do, and sitting down for a morning nap. The phone rang again. "Mr Larry, I'm sorry there must've been something wrong." "Yes, I don't want you calling this number again, it's you lot that make this world a miserable place to live in." "I beg your pardon." said an appalled voice down the phone. "This is Police Inspector Jones calling and I do not appreciate your manner, sir. I'm inquiring about a series of burglaries in your area, and wanted to ask you a few questions. Have you noticed anything suspicious recently?" "Oh my, I do apologise." said Larry apologetically. "No. No, nothing suspicious. My wife bought a cardigan for 100 yesterday, and that's daylight robbery. Haha." "Hmm." said an unamused voice down the phone. "Well, let us know." "Of course, of course. What's the number?" The phone went dead. "...miserable." repeated Larry. And then the doorbell wrong. "Oh christ! Who is it?!" It was Smith the cleaner. "Good morning Mr Larry," he announced, holding out his hand in greeting. Larry stood in the entrance looking confused with his cup of tea in one hand and his other awkwardly holding up his trousers. "Dog ate my belt. Do come in, I'll take this as my cue to leave - get a bit of fresh air, stretch the legs and all that. Here's the key, you can leave it under the plant pot when you're done." It is a remarkable aspect of human nature that we can put so much effort into being lazy. You can leave someone alone with work to do and come back to nd them hoovering, with their desk immaculately laid out in perfect symmetry, the wobbly table leg screwed and wobble-less, the work completely untouched. A child when asked to do the washing up will have a sudden compulsion to nish a piece of mathematics homework not due in until the next week. And so Larry, for inexplicable reasons, walked to the other end of town to avoid the corner shop which sold Mrs Larry's lottery tickets. The little request had gone into that part of the brain where all chores are stored, all of them just about to be done, all of them cowering behind something, anything else that might be done instead. Maybe it's just men who are blighted by this crippling disease, but I'd hate to be seen as sexist. It was whilst at the other end of town that Larry - who was passing the time watching the ducks on the pond, and wondering why he was doing so, and how his life had come to such a juncture - was approached by an old school friend; Roger. "Good heavens if it isn't Larry?" exclaimed Roger, taking our poor protagonist by such a surprise that he spun round, lost his balanced and then tried to appear nonplussed as he stood knee deep in the pond. It took him rather a while to respond to the question, which really didn't necessitate an answer. "Yes. Roger! How are you old chap?" "Oh ne," and so on and so on... It so happened that Roger was in town for the weekend on business, and agreed to spend his evening catching up with Larry. "Help yourself to a drink." said Larry, setting the example with a tumbler of whisky when they'd returned to the Larry's establishment. So the two friends spent the evening together, and just as the drip, drip of water over time can erode the hardest rock, so the smallest sips, given an evening, can get you staggeringly drunk. They fell to talking about subjects far outside of their elds of knowledge, progressing through such profound topics and frivolously wasting each one, eager to reach the next in their new-found joy of the esoteric. They whiled away the hours as great philosophers; politics, science, faith, they had the answers to all the deepest questions. In truth to an outsider the philosophical discussion the two were having was garbled gibberish, but they weren't to know. The next day the sun shone at it's brightest since records began, Larry swore it. And a lot more swearing was being done from downstairs where Roger was complaining to the fridge about its being

too noisy. It seemed to them that overnight the whole house had formed an unpleasant attitude towards the two occupants and appeared to have the singular aim of causing them as much discomfort as possible. When Roger dropped a fork and it clattered to the ground Larry cursed his wife for being so shortsighted and buying a ceramic oor, carpet would never had made such a noise. It was early afternoon, and their were quite a few things amiss in Larry's house, for a start a lot of the furniture was missing. "A LOT OF THE FURNITURE IS MISSING!" yelled Larry, instantly regretting it and sitting down on the oor. His mind, which at present was curiously detached from his consciousness, acted marvelously in connecting the realisation of this afternoon and the events of yesterday, specically the conversation with the policeman. "Oh dear" he exclaimed. He crawled over to the phone and asked for Inspector Jones. "Hullo" said Mr Jones, stereotypically. "Inspector, it's Larry, I've been robbed!" "Another cardigan joke Mr Larry?" replied the Inspector with vehement repugnance, which took some time for Larry to quell in his explanation of the disaster which had befallen him. Whilst our two friends waited in self-inicted agony for the policeman to arrive they looked at what else was amiss in the house. For a start they were both wearing their shoes, which may not seem odd to you or me but to Larry, who had been violently conditioned into always removing them in the house it was curious indeed, as he was positive that they'd both removed them when they entered the house. The phone rang. "Christ!" "Larry! I'll be back in a couple of hours," it was Mrs Larry, "and I was just making sure that you'd got my lottery ticket, the numbers are on tonight." Larry froze, but in his mind was running towards the edge of a cliff repeatedly blaspheming our Lord Jesus. Then his mind had it's second marvellous thought of the day. "Yes I did dear," he continued "but something awful has happened, you see I put it in the cabinet, but the cabinet has been stolen along with a lot of the furniture. We were burgled!" Larry was grinning from cheek to cheek as he said this. Yes he was clumsy at times, but stick him in the deep end and he can be as sharp as a razor. "Oh darling that's terrible! Is Chuchi alright?" "Yes," replied Larry, "I'm ne too." He hung up and sat down on the sofa. Everything was ne, apart from the furniture, but that was Mrs Larry's mothers and from now on he wouldn't have to enter the living room with a sense of repulsion every time he saw it. In fact, Larry was so happy he forgot all about his hangover and picked up an irate Roger (who hadn't forgotten his hangover) to waltz clumsily on the carpet. Inspector Jones turned up and things went downhill from there. The policeman didn't seem too happy about the two not remembering anything from the night before and made to leave. His phone rang. "Ok gentlemen," he said, turning to Larry and Roger after he'd nished his conversation on the phone, "your furniture has been found and this case in no longer of police concern. In fact I'm in a right mind to charge you for wasting police time Mr Larry. " said Inspector Jones, growing ever more incensed. "Bloody drunks." He ended his soliloquy: exeunt. When his wife turned up at quarter past seven that evening Larry had quite some explaining to do. He started by explaining that in fact their house hadn't been burgled. This was met by a shocked rant from Mrs Larry, rather putting Larry off. If this news hadn't gone down too well he didn't know how he was to put across the rest of the tale. He decided to be straightforward about the fact that he had been drunk, managing to shift a lot of the blame onto Roger, who intelligently remained out of sight for the proceedings. Then Larry mumbled the part where in their drunkenness they had had the philosophical notion that they should be more charitable in life, and Larry had argued that he was, and to prove it had claimed that he could part with Mrs Larry's mother's furniture easily and without any expectation of personal gain. Larry couldn't bare to look Mrs Larry in her demonic, burning eyes as he told her how they'd taken the furniture down to the charity shop and left it outside.

"And I guess that's where my lottery ticket is, is it?!" inquired Mrs Larry, cutting straight to the jugular. Time seemed to tick by painfully slow. Larry didn't know what to say. He'd let his wife down, again. "Oh..." Larry put on his most pathetic face as he readied to crumple at Mrs Larry's feet. Roger entered, waving jubilantly. "You see, my darling..." said Larry, wishing he hadn't added the 'darling' after seeing Mrs Larry's facial expression transform from mad to enraged. Then Larry saw what Roger was waving so jubilantly. A lottery ticket! To Larry's great relief Mrs Larry calmed down after she had her beloved lottery ticket and she was now sat comfortably in front of the telly. The doorbell rang and the furniture was back where it unfortunately belonged. Larry made to help with his one free hand, making apologies about the dog eating his belt and having to hold up his trousers to avoid making a scene. "Get another bloody belt." reprimanded Mrs Larry from the sofa. Larry apologised profusely to the charity shop owners. All was back to normal. Neither Larry nor Roger had any idea how the ticket had ended up in Roger's pocket, but they say that alcohol brings out our true character, and maybe, deep down, Larry wasn't such a lazy and forgetful fool after all. "Larry you can be such an embarrassment sometimes!" remarked Mrs Larry. "I resent that." said Larry. Then his trousers fell down.

The End.

Thomas Johnson