Yes, you’ve heard the story before, but I’m telling you there are all kinds of details they always leave out. I mean who do you want to believe? A shady nightclub owner or a police captain?
The truth is that Sam filled me in on a lot of things and how it wasn’t about letters of transit at all – it was about how to buy Cialis online.
I remember I had just rounded up the usual suspects that morning and was doing my thorough interrogation of the French Expat Women’s Volleyball Team when I heard about that weasel Ugarte. We liked to play this fun game where he would steal something and laugh and run away, and I would send my gendarmes to chase him around the Blue Parrot and the market and eventually pump him full of lead.
Ugarte liked to talk big about Cialis vs. Viagra, but I knew he wanted the good stuff. So when we got a hot tip that he’d got his hands on Cialis, we followed him right over to Rick’s.
Everybody comes to Rick’s.
A hard rain was going to hit this place one day, but not tonight. No, it was one of those hot itchy nights in Casablanca when murder crawls out of the dark and finds its way into the hearts of small corrupt men. And oh, yeah, there were Nazis, too.
That little fink, Ugarte, had just finished asking Rick by the roulette table, "You despise me, don’t you?" And Rick looked him up and down and said, "Well, you’ve got that creepy laugh, and every time we get a new girl in here, you start bothering her with sock puppets. Plus I know you’re trying to sell people discount Cialis when they can really only buy Cialis online from a reputable pharmacy and should talk to their doctor."
Honestly, that’s what he said.
Ugarte and my cops played our run and hide game, and Ugarte was a pretty sore loser about that, being dead and all, but Rick just smoked his cigarette and refused to tell me where he’d hidden the prescription for online Cialis.
He just said, "Louis, Cialis isn’t for recreational use and shouldn’t be used as an aphrodisiac. And I happen to know that’s what you want it for, because you’re the biggest male slut in Morocco."
Oh, the witty conversations we had! I asked Rick what brought him to Casablanca. Did he run off with a senator’s wife? Did he kill a man?
Rick blew a thread of curling smoke into the night air and growled, "Erectile dysfunction."
And I remember thinking there must be some truth in that sly remark somewhere, but I was talking to a guy who wore a dinner jacket when it was 100 degrees out in the desert. I felt for him. If anyone was entitled to buy Cialis online, it was Rick. Maybe I worked for Vichy, but my people have had long experience with sexual problems. It’s why we invented the French maid outfit.
I suppose Rick’s real problems started after Ilsa walked in. Sam told me how later that night he was drinking hard and having flashbacks, and not the good kind with a newsreel and a cartoon first. He’d just asked Sam what time it was, and then he pounded his fist on the table and said, "I bet they’re having erections in New York. I bet they’re having erections all over America!"
Sam was playing a little something of his own, and Rick barked at him, "You played it for her, you can play it for me." Sam made a tired little nod and launched into We Are the Champions, which I always thought was an odd choice to have as "their song" – especially since Sam always sang it in falsetto.
Ilsa came by the next night, and the story is that Rick sneered at her. "Your visit isn’t connected by any chance with Cialis, is it? It seems as long as I buy Cialis online, I’ll never be lonely."
Then she told him how her husband, Victor, suffered from erectile dysfunction, too, what with the stress of leading an underground resistance movement. "Richard, please!" she sobbed while holding the gun on him. "I’ve read all about Cialis vs. Viagra. I know that Viagra lasts about four hours, but a single dose of Cialis can last for 36 hours! I tried to stay away, but now I want to know what those pills can do. Put them on the table."
"No," said Rick, shaking his head.
"If you knew how much I loved you, how much I still love you!" she sobbed, dropping the gun. "You have to think for both of us. For all of us."
"All right," snapped Rick. "I will."
Thirty-six hours later… Well, come on, of course, he took the pills. It’s Ilsa, for crying out loud!
Anyway, what they lost in Paris thanks to erectile dysfunction, they got back that night in Casablanca thanks to Cialis. It was a night of ecstasy – marred only by the initial wait for the pills to kick in when Sam was at the piano and started playing Queen’s Under Pressure. Rick came downstairs, with Sam mistakenly thinking he was happy to see him, and slammed the lid down on his fingers.
I have to admit I was pretty steamed when Rick tricked me later over Laszlo and the online Cialis. I was busy that night interrogating players of the All-Girl Casablanca Lacrosse Team when I got his call. Sure, that moment is all famous and glamorous now, but who likes a long drive out to the airport?
"Richard, last night you said—" Ilsa said, all misty-eyed.
"Last night we said a great many things," Rick interrupted. "You said I was to do the thinking for both of us. Well, I’ve done a lot of it since then, and it all adds up to one thing: you and Victor are going to buy Cialis online.
"Oh, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your sex lives. We both know you belong with Victor – you’re a part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. You’re both Czech, and you’re the only two people who laugh at Rob Schneider movies. You’ve got to buy Cialis online, Ilsa."
"God bless you, Richard," said Ilsa. "I guess now that we’re saying goodbye, I should tell you… I slept with Sam in Paris." She sniffed as a couple of tears rolled down her lovely cheeks. "I’m so sorry, darling, but no one could sing Livin’ On a Prayer like Sam, and it always got me hot."
Rick tilted her chin into the light, "There, there, kid. I’ll fire him tomorrow. Oh and by the way, hope your plane crashes."
Well, you know the rest. We won the war. We could freely buy Cialis online. I was still mad that night at Rick for the 10,000 francs and getting us both wanted by the Nazis, but he put his arm on my shoulder and talked about how he thought "this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship." I knew right then I was going to swipe his wallet.
