Pool_1

his calling fail, made Frank his hobby. Larry used the table - subtly - as a place to help as Frank sought no help. Perhaps that red ribbon bearing her name, like blood on the chest, was his cry for help. Who would pull him from his cross? That's my job is what Larry Osten thought. Psychiatric rescue isn't, can't be, as dramatic as pulling out lodged bullets. It's in the subtlety. Table talk was regularly spiked with nonmedical content, much of it philosophic, deftly slipped in by Larry who, himself, stayed out of it, but orchestrated the flow. He just looked a certain way as if to say "And what do you think?" "We're all on his couch," Macaluso once remarked to Shannon. Osten was uncanny in his detection of unrest. "Ooooh, I see hackles, Mac." "Total screw up," Macaluso blurted, "Two long cases scrubbed without warning. Chicken pox. Nobody bothered to tell us. You know? We're standing around with our thumbs up our asses and nobody tells us the cases are canceled!" "You DID wash your hands?" Denise joked as the table mumbled "eeeewwww." "They're still in there," Ivory, at the next table butted in. "Huh?" "Your thumbs are still up your ass, where they usually are. Feeling your frontal lobes, are you?" Mac asked Belachnik if he farted this guy out. "Naw. My shit smells sweet," Belachnik sneered as his huge frame stood and pivoted to face the offensive Ivory with a most muscular neck-swelling pose. "You no tease my messed up twisted baby man. Me crush you like peeg you are," then sat down with, "you sick sucker of brains." Ivory just shook his head, muttering to Denise to control her orangutan and then referring back to Macaluso, "Mina is such a sweetheart. How's she live with him?" Ivory