Groucho and Miss Olive

Groucho was left in the middle of cranking out one-liners when Olive Oyl ramshackled in with a few quarts to go in her vocabulary. Something? Sure. Something always left. “Why not right?” “Right.” “Who is?” And then he goes, “You!” with all the self-seeking capacity of a loosed nonvenomous eastern hognose. “Right away, that’s when,” is all Olive can puff out as she sneaks into a fold-up chair and thinks about inhaling a long, luxurious drag of cigarette smoke. Groucho snarls. He does his thing. He chews on his cigar and twitches his eyebrows right along with his smirky mouth, which goes all ape-shit on him, in times like these. Even Ms. Oyl gets stressed over the timing of these things. Even she, never a keeper’s keeper, gets to kneeling for things to get better, in these times, times like this one, here. “I want deeper…deeper moments!” Groucho doesn’t always shout such stuff, but now he does. And Olive’s within shouting distance, of course, so she frumps up her black shirt while she sits in an awkward rock-leaning pose and gets less cozy. “Sir. Mix me a drink.” “I fashion you’ve already had six today.” “Take or give.” “Very not well?” “Not very.” So, there they are. Were. Or happened to be, just for a spell. ‘There were harbingers in the weeds of (this is, now, Mr. Marx in his thoughts) of us, once, dear. But (his head, rounded another corner) I’m forgiving in what I’ll let on to myself about injuring this here ego, you see…