Three flights of stairs later and Stu was ready to collapse. The 100 year-old building had no elevator and, apparently, no air conditioning. Sweat dripped off his forehead and his lungs were on fire. At the third floor landing he found a small snack room with two vending machines and a payphone, and most importantly of all, a bench. Staggering to it, Stu dropped his aunt’s luggage and flopped, gasping and sweating.
“Well, git a move on,” Aunt Sue chided as she bounded up the stairs carrying only her handbag, Razr still attached to her ear.
Stu cut his beloved aunt a sideways look that would have made Saw Ron pause and rethink his position. Aunt Sue didn’t even notice as she jabbered into her cellular phone.
“Reminds me of Helm’s Deep,” Glimmergroin stomped to the landing and mopped his face with his beard.
Stu leaned his back against the wall and concentrated on breathing and not having a heart attack.
Aunt Sue dashed back into the small snack area, hand bag on her arm and wig cocked side-ways on her head. The sides puffed out and the hair at the crown stood up and out. “What’re we standing around here for? Time’s a wasting. I didn’t come all the way to New York City to sit in some smelly flop house.”
A woman wearing bright red lipstick, an orange polka dot blouse, white skirt, and metallic gold cowboy boots stopped and stared at Aunt Sue. She hastily adjusted her own brassy red wig and moved on toward the stairs.
“It’s not a flop house, Aunt Sue,” Stu managed to utter between gasps. “It’s the Y.”
Aunt Sue sniffed. “In my day, only people who stayed in these places had their bread buttered on the wrong side.” She gave her nephew an appraising look just as Legless slid around the corner. “Maybe things ain’t changed so much.”
“How does one butter one’s bread on the wrong side?” Legless asked he bent down and gathered the handles to Aunt Sue’s suitcase.
Stu sucked on his teeth and quietly gathered the rest of the cases and bags and followed Legless toward their shared room, Glimmergroin close in tow.
“Beloved?” Legless persisted as he led Stu through a door and into a room with two double beds, a dresser, night stand, one chair and a fifteen inch television.
“It’s an expression,” Stu finally answered. “It’s sort of like us being bonded and all that.”
Legless tilted his head and placed the suitcase on the bed. “Come see our accommodations.”
Three strides led the man and elf across the hall to their shared room. It was identical in every way to Aunt Sue’s room—save for the single double bed. Stu tried not to groan. “I think we’ve got the rooms confused. This should probably be Aunt Sue’s and Glimmergroin’s.”
“No,” Legless shook his head. “We already agreed to switch. Aunt Sue said that she and Glimmergroin couldn’t fit into this bed. What with all the---“
“Right!” Stu interrupted. He dropped his overnight bag on the floor with a thump.
“Sue is waiting in the lobby,” Glimmgroin stuck his head in the door. “She says she wants to go see a fellow named Hatton.” He sounded a little put out.
Stu frowned as he stuck his head in what passed for the closet---a cubicle with nails embedded into the walls with wire coat hangers dangling from them. “I didn’t think she knew any one in New York, besides Brenda and my girls.”
“I dunno, laddie,” Glimmergroin tugged glumly at his beard. “All I know is she said she was going to see this man, Hattan, by herself, if she had to.”
Stu whipped his head around. “Manhattan.”
“That’s what I said.”
“It’s not a person, it’s a place,” Stu sighed. “It’s the heart of New York.”
The dwarf’s face immediately brightened and he clapped his hands together enthusiastically. “Well, then, that’s different. What are we waitin’ for?”
Stu jammed his hands in his pockets and stared at the floor for a moment, contemplating his feet, his life, and the fickleness of the universe in general. “I need to get in touch with Brenda.”
“Can’t you use your Aunt’s portable planter to call the Queen?”
Stu sighed, thought about correcting the elf, sighed again, and responded. “Yep.”
The trio found Aunt Sue outside on the sidewalk, handbag clamped firmly under her arm, cell phone still attached to her ear, talking a mile a minute, while sniffing the air like a hound coursing a fox.
“Aunt Sue,” Stu tapped his aunt on the shoulder.
Startled, she spun, handbag swinging wildly, and connected with Stu’s ribs. He grunted and bent double, gasping for air.
“Well hell, Louise, I done went and clocked poor old Stu,” she lamented into her phone. “He snuck up behind me.”
“No problem, Aunt Sue,” Stu gasped as he straightened and backed away from his aunt.
“Louise? I gotta go. We’re heading into Manhattan to do some shopping. I’m going to get me some of them sexy drawers like they got in that catalogue your husband gets.”
Stu felt his toes curling inside his shoes and counted to ten, squeezing his eyes shut against the imagery flittering through his head.
“Nope, I want some of them red ones what ain’t got no crotch in ‘em.”
Several people walking up the stairs into the YMCA stopped and stared at the little old woman on the cell phone.
Stu steadfastly practiced breathing.
“Can I have a pair?” Legless asked.
“NO! NO!” Stu grabbed the elf’s arm and marched him toward Manhattan Avenue, away from the YMCA.
“But, beloved,” Legless tried to plead his case.
“NO!”
Aunt Sue sighed into the Razr. “I swear, Louise, that nephew of mine has a mutant hissing cockroach up his ass.”
Over the sound of traffic, Louise’s tinny voice could be heard through the Razr’s earpiece. “Well, fuck an A, Sue!”