You Can't Throw Away a Great Deal Like That
- Karl goes to his AA meeting and listens to some testimonies, including Dick's story, which is that he basically drank his family and job away before realizing he needed to get some help.
- Afterward, Karl and Dick go to Pongo's for dinner and visit until Dick has to leave for a date. He offers to buy Karl and Darla dinner.
- Darla and Karl sit in a booth in the back so Darla can smoke. They talk about Huckleberry Finn, and then Darla starts having a dirty conversation about Karl with Mr. Babbitt. Um, weird.
- They talk about Karl's ticket out of therapy, and Darla feels like an idiot for calling Gratz names and missing out on the deal. She also tells him he's going to miss out on all the reruns of the Madmen's bizarre stories.
- Darla goes off on a tangent about what a bad person she is and what she almost did to her brother. Then, she checks to make sure no one is listening to their conversation and launches into a new topic—somebody told Darla what Karl does to cats down by the river.
- Wait … Karl does stuff to cats by a river? According to rumors that are flying around the school, yes—he does a repeat performance of Squid's bunny with his mom's cats.
- We've spent enough time with this guy to know that while he may be an unreliable narrator, he's probably not a cat killer, especially since he's been debating whether or not it's right to want to kill the bed-pooping cat.
- Karl tries to explain to Darla that it's a raccoon killing all of the cats, but she doesn't believe him. She asks if he killed a dog, too, as well as various other small animals. And here's the really weird part: She seems turned on by it.
- She also thinks he got his letter so that he could stay out of therapy and not get caught doing bad things to animals.
- Then, it gets downright spooky: She asks if she can come along the next time he kills a cat and then lists the things she wants to do afterward. We'll skip the gory details because you're probably traumatized enough from reading them in the book.
- On her way out of Pongo's, Darla hugs Karl in a really intimate way, and Stacy walks in as this happens. She looks horrified. Karl realizes she thinks he's cheating on Cheryl with Darla.
- Meanwhile, Karl thinks about the good that could come out of this conversation. If he can figure out who the bed-pooping cat is, he can kill it, invite Darla along, and lose his virginity to her all at once.
- Hmm, maybe there's something to his Psycho nickname after all.