GK: It's good to be with you on a Saturday night. I look forward to this show all week. This is the only social life I have. My unwavering honesty, my inability to tell anything but the straight truth, has alienated me from friends and family, and my only comfort and solace now is the company of strangers like yourselves and this good-looking woman here.
CF: Hi. You new in town?
GK: A bottle of champagne, Maurice!
TK: Oui, monsieur. (OPENING CHAMPAGNE BOTTLE)
GK: And bring me a dozen of your best oysters.
TK: FRENCH GIBBERISH.
GK: No, I want the ones from the ocean.
CF: Ocean oysters. You are so cool. Dance with me.
GK: Gladly. There may be trouble ahead But while there's moonlight and music and love and romance Let's face the music and dance.
(CORK POP)
CF: I never danced this close to anyone.
GK: Before the fiddlers have fled Before they ask us to pay the bill and while we still have the chance Let's face the music and dance.
CF: You know, for a writer, you really can dance.
GK: I'm sorry. For a what?
CF: For a writer. Didn't you say you're a writer?
GK: I'm a rider. And a roper.
CF: Oh! A rider!
GK: You thought I was a writer?
CF: Well----
GK: One of those moody guys in the Hush Puppies and the corduroy jackets with the leather elbow patches and the dandruff on the shoulders? Me? Are you kidding?
CF: I can see I was wrong....
GK: Writers can't dance like this. You have to have broken your leg a couple times to be able to dance like this.
CF: Oh, wow.
GK: I'm a rider, babes. This is Billings. Writers are over around Livingston. Missoula. This is eastern Montana, where the men are. CF: I see.
GK: You want to go for long walks and hear some guy talk about how he's finally getting his life together, you go to Livingston. You want to dance, you come to Billings. You want to dance?
CF: I want to dance.
GK: HEY----
TK: What is it?
GK: Those aren't champagne glasses. Those are red wine glasses!
TK: Ah! Pardon, monsieur! (FRENCH GIBBERISH)
GK: Move to your right, Maurice. (TWO GUNSHOTS, GLASS SHATTER) Now bring us a coupla champagne glasses.
TK: Oui, monsieur.
CF: You are so cool. How long are you in town?
GK: Couple hours. Then I gotta head out. FBI asked me to help out on a case.
CF: Oh? What's that?
GK: Bunch of Lutherans are holed up on a farm west of here. They're demanding that the government raise the minimum wage and increase spending on social services.
CF: They're holed up there?
GK: They've got a barn full of egg noodles and a couple underground tanks full of cream of mushroom soup. They could hold out for a year.
CF: Sounds serious.
GK: You ever try to negotiate with Lutherans? It's misery. That's why it took em a hundred years to unite the different branches of the Lutheran church.
CF: Because they're stubborn?
GK: That, and the fact that they talk so slow. By the time they tell you their position, you've completely lost interest.
CF: How's the FBI going to get them out of their hideout?
GK: We've given them until Sunday, and then we send in a couple of C-47 cargo planes in low, and dump a couple tons of garlic and red pepper on them.
TK: Here, monsieur. Your champagne. (POURING)
GK: Thanks, Maurice. Here's to you, beautiful. What's your name?
CF: My name's Jane. And here's my husband, Ted.
GK: Hi, Ted.
TR: Hi fella.
GK: You take over here, Ted --- I've got a show to do.
TR: Great. Glad to. Good to see you.
GK: Same here.......
© 1996 Garrison Keillor