what it is and what it does is

The problem with Chuck was that he was just as neurotic as his ex-girlfriend. Yes, he'd been removed, or perhaps delivered, from his impotence, and by a considerable margin (that is to say, from nothing to something in terms of effectuality is the same as the impossibility of multiplying a number by zero and coming out with anything substantial), but now things had to be done his way, and he always had a twinkle in his eye and a reason for it.

The problem with Bill was that he was...Bill. It took him a little bit to listen to Under My Thumb and actually get the creeps from it, and by the time he'd realized the overall ick of the lyrics he'd also gotten the marimba riff stuck in his head, and was now fully determined to simply rerelease the song with more "pizzazztastic" (generic, perhaps approximating scat vocalizations) words so that all the guys who already had the ick would jump on the Blazin' Bill version - free advertising, man with his ear to the streets, don't have to do a thing, it's brilliant, Chuck!

The problem with Belinda was that she didn't have either of those problems, not a scaredy-cat tendency nor a gung-ho streak longer than the animal skin she wore careening out of Paradise Found. Leaving aside those who'd turn their noses up at her profession, one might simply say that the problem with Belinda was that she liked to make eggs in her underwear (unfortunate placement of preposition, and no comment on whether or not it might in some strange way be true) and she didn't like them scrambled.

So the end result, suffice it to say, was that Chuck and Bill adored Belinda, and Belinda adored Chuck and Bill, but she did so with a healthy dose more squinted-pursed concern in her eyes when she cocked her head and tongued at her crooked tooth and wondered whether or not she'd even be able to break into their enthusiastic not-really-an-argument at all, let alone come out of it without blowing more steam into their latest cockamamie plan.

They were still pimping, technically, but the girls had settled on corraling clients in close locations, so they walked together and forwent the cars, which Chuck couldn't stomach the thought of commandeering anymore. The quiet morgue, without Bill? Tedium. Hellish. And a little dirty feeling, too, with Belinda there sitting on his lap while he carefully recorded names far too complicated for his dyslexia on death certificates (something Polish, who cares) and toe tags.

He could handle being a private accountant, anyway. Worked out of his apartment, into which Belinda had so very conveniently moved and whereat Bill crashed when he wasn't delivering gig at all hours of the night. That was his latest brilliant idea: hawk the streets, delivering food to anyone who asked with the promise that he'd run as fast as he could to the sandwich shop and get there before they closed. Not exactly an airtight pitch, but once in a while he'd gouge his clientele on bills they gave for sandwiches or pizza being offered at half the price - it was honest, you see, because Bill couldn't remember the prices himself. He just made up a number and thereafter made up the difference in the case that he'd lowballed (another point for his honesty, that he even did this periodically).

Post-pimping, Chuck found it hard to return to the centered quietude that had been such a dull, ho-hum life as a morgue attendant. Did he want the toxic stressors of Wall Street banking? No, certainly not, but he wanted...

A different kind of security. Maybe he did miss the lucrativeness. Something more full-bodied than aiming at the correct wetness for the eggs every morning (he liked them wet, Bill liked them dry, and Belinda liked them right in between, but what kind of a marketable skill is "perfectly cooks scrambled eggs to order in his baby blue underwear", anyway?) and getting used to orange juice with a different dosage of pulp.

"Belinda," he'd started hesitantly, falling back into a little bit of his old fidgetiness and the much rarer habit of actually skirting eye contact instead of flirting it. That old penchant for directness, albeit unconventional, was something that'd hooked her, of course. She'd run an almond-shaped fingernail through his blessedly even sideburn to compensate.

(They weren't sitting in the bathtub anymore. She didn't wear the big fur anymore, except occasionally when they went out, and even then Bill stole it half the time, carousing, and they caught him later swooning at the way it still smelled like the both of the others. He'd been on them for a good few hours that night, just kissing and touching all the places he was curious about, new and old and all. They talked, and he listened, but only idly. Payback for all how attentively they always listened to him.)

"I'm right here, Chuck."

She was right there. His hair wasn't falling out. He and Bill weren't falling out either. He hadn't called his mother in a while, and neither of them minded it. "Is this...all?"

"You wanna invest in the condo after all?"

God, how did she know him so well? A brief bout with real estate (say, six or eight months) saw itself through, and then they were sitting a little higher up, but it was the doing that had done it, and not the result waiting at the end.

Bill, generally more sexual than romantic, let them on with their doe-eyed looks and their purposeful askance glances when they walked past jewelry stores, but when Belinda had misplaced her favorite earrings and asked "Bill, honey, have you seen them?" he probably did catch himself swooning. Probably. Just a little bit.

They were happy. They certainly weren't normal, and maybe that abnormality fed in on itself in the way that Bill was nominally excluded at points, but they were happy. Wet streets and raucous crowds didn't bother them. Didn't make them feel right at home either.

Most of the pride they took in the city was, admittedly, a spite back at the long-departed Koogles (maybe Chuck did feel a stab of guilt at the fact that Belinda was singularly skinny, and maybe that stab did feel distinctly akin to the stab of anxiety that came of not having checked the apartment, but what could he do?), even if they sprang for walking far more often than they did for cabs.

Not like you could fit three abreast on a considerate sidewalk. Not like Belinda could stand behind Chuck and Bill holding hands in Times Square in 1983, no matter how they held their heads post-propter their prior occupation.

The problem with Chuck was that he wanted things, and knew all too well how and why to get them.

The problem with Bill was that he wanted things, and knew all too well how and why he hadn't gotten them yet.

The problem with Belinda was that she didn't want anyone else, and she probably was a little too bright for being a careerless odd jobs woman in this big, bombastic decade. But there'd be time for that. Plenty of it. And not just night shifts.

So that wasn't really a problem, was it?