Albert Edward Peacock IV: A Short Story

The most terrific name I ever heard was Albert Edward Peacock IV. The sonuvabitch lived up to it too, you should’ve seen him. He had this incredibly pink face, he really did, you know those guys that always look sunburnt even when they’re not. He had this terribly bleached hair too, it was yellow more than blonde really. Another thing was he always wore these 1970s style P.E. shorts like he walked straight out of The Royal Tenenbaums, he was a real character old Albert. Everybody was always giving him a hard time cause he looked like a deadbeat, but he was real patient with them, you’ve never seen anybody more idealistic and patient in your life the way he talked to them, it killed me. There was this one guy, one of those real middle aged baby boomer types, he walked straight up to Albert, started lecturing him about applying himself with this phony little smile on the whole time like he was being so goddamn clever, like it was such an intelligent goddamn joke— the way baby …show more content…
But old Albert looked at him with this smile going all the way across his face like a saint, I mean really like a goddamn saint—not the way people do when they’re trying to get you back either, he really meant it. I asked him and he said he was out there cause his parents thought he had too much freedom. They thought he had too much freedom so they sent him out to Costa Rica, that killed me. We were in Costa Rica at the time. Apparently back home he had a car and lived right by the beach and didn’t get very exceptional grades at school. He was one of those really intelligent kids who didn’t get exceptional grades at school. We used to chew the fat talking about movies and T.V. and philosophy a lot.