Standing at the pinball machine by the payphone near the restrooms, he cracked open his roll of quarters and dropped one down the slot. It was one of the new machines that go blip blip toot toot. Stupid. Okay. In rapid succession he shot his three chances, paying the progress of each metal ball no mind whatever, and studied the contraption’s face — a space-age tableau of the rock group Styx, the lead guitarist of whom was evidently about to be fellated by a mindless jungle woman strewn before his feet. Behind them, intergalactic bodies flashed with electricity, the phosphorus-fires of infinite patience. Essentially you could never defeat these things, because they were the living dead. He moved his operation over to the telephone, dialled the number and deposited the money and said, “Mom.”
The two substitute teachers were merry souls. They had taken to throwing ice at one another, giggling, chewing up their skinny red plastic straws. Mournfully indicating the ice cubes on his rug, the bartender reprimanded them. They found the idea of the rug hilarious. “Where’s James, Ma?” Bill Houston said into the phone. “I’m looking for James.” The teachers wanted another round, and the bartender tried to talk them into beer. Bill Houston dialled and deposited. The teachers were entertained by the suggestion that they might enjoy a beer now, and countered by suggesting that the bartender engage in solo sexual maneuvers while freshening their drinks. “James?” Bill Houston said into the telephone, “You recognize who this is?” He regarded, through clear eyes, the glittering dust that fell through the sun onto the heads of the two women and the man behind the bar. The atmosphere was muted, rarefied, and holy. “James, I’ll tell you straight out,” he told his half-brother, “I’m looking for some shit to get into.” Completely expressionless, the bartender stood before the howling blender, grinding up for his exhilarated patrons another couple of margaritas.
Somebody at the Tribune told Bill Houston to call the police, and the police instructed him to get in touch with the federal Welfare. “It’s me she was looking for,” he explained over and over, and everyone was helpful when they learned the papers had a line on the situation. He found her at the Children’s Services Division in the afternoon, napping in a chair of torn-and-taped imitation leather. Baby Ellen lay in her lap, and a few chairs away Miranda disputed with a little baldheaded boy about the possession of a coloring book. The place smelled like an ashtray. Everybody was black or foreign or deformed. There were people with crutches and people clutching soiled magazines to their chests, and children all around them. He leaned close and said, “Jamie,” hoping he was being quiet enough.
When she opened her eyes she said, “I been looking for you.”
“Well, you found me. How about us getting out of here?”
“I got to fill out some more forms, I think.” She looked around, apparently trying to locate herself among these others.
“Shit. Once they start you on filling out forms, it just don’t ever end.” He tried to think of a way of explaining to her that even now, as the two of them dawdled here, these people were inventing the forms that would defeat her grandchildren.
“Miranda? Look who’s here.” Jamie stretched out her hand and opened and closed her fist as if trying to grab her daughter’s attention. To Bill Houston she said, “Let me get my bearings, okay?”
“Get your bearings out in the world. There’s no bearings in here, I guarantee you.”
“Hey — I ain’t ashamed,” she said. “Half my goddamn family’s on Welfare.”
Bill Houston was exasperated. “You were looking for me, weren’t you?”
“I had a few words to say to you.” She was gathering up her coat, her kid’s coat, her two kids. Bill Houston watched her closely, trying to determine if she was crippled in the heart. As she laid the baby where she’d just been sitting and helped Miranda get into her coat, she seemed able to concentrate through one eye only, while the other roamed a dreamland. He felt anxious and useless. “I got a suitcase around here,” Jamie said. “Excuse me,” she said to the security woman behind the desk, “whatever happened to my suitcase? I got about fifteen bucks, too,” she remarked to Bill Houston. “I been making money hand over fist in this town.”
He was taking it as easy as he could. All through Tuesday and Wednesday Jamie was a little too quiet, and then he had to get a sitter and keep her away from the kids almost all of Thursday, because suddenly she was angrier than she knew how to handle. Her favorite movie—Endless Love—was playing one El stop down from their hotel, but they had to walk out of it in the middle because of the noisy conversation they were having in the dark theater. “You mean those monsters pull their shit on me and just keep on living?” She was crying out in front of the Biograph. “That the way it works? That the way it works?”
Bill Houston handed her his red bandana. “Was there something that works some other way?” He was totally sincere in asking this.
“For God’s sake, listen, Bill — they went up under my skirt!”
“I know. I know. I know. But goddamn it. You step out on Clark after sundown, that whole street’s going to go up under your skirt. What am I supposed to do?”
“Help me stomp their heads down to nothing! Let’s kill those fuckers!”
“That’s what I’d have to do,” he said. “Ain’t nothing short of that going to make it all right. Don’t you see?”
“Then let’s do it! They deserve it!”
“Shit—” a whole lot of reasons choked his speech.
“We could find them. I know we could find them. They deserve it!” Bitterly she wept.
“No way,” Bill Houston said flatly. “I never murdered anybody in my life. I’ve done everything else but that, I guess.”
“Why not?” She was clearly helpless to understand.
“I don’t know why not! I just know this: there’s something fucked up about it.”
Jamie stood jamming his bandana against her nose and looking around her. “This is so real I can taste my own tongue in my own mouth.” It was nearly five; the light was leaving the streets. “You know what? I’ve read about this place.” They were standing in the alley where John Dillinger had been killed.
“What did he get?” Miranda said, putting her hands on the table and leaning over to look at Bill Houston’s meal.
“Sit back down, you little weirdo,” Bill ordered. “I got a bacon-cheeseburger and fries.”
“He got french fries. That’s what I wanted,” Miranda said.
“Then you should’ve said so. State your wishes at the outset, otherwise you’re screwed.” He took a big bite.
“How do you like that?” Jamie said. “She’s drinking it!” She had put Coca-Cola in the baby’s bottle.
“Must be thirsty,” Bill Houston said.
“I need ketchup. I need ketchup for my fries. Can I have some french fries?”
Bill Houston looked at Miranda with violence on his face. “Damn!” He got up and went over to the counter. “One small order of french fries,” he told the boy. They were the only customers in the establishment, and so the boy hustled to fill the order, rocketing around in his very own fast-food universe, a tiny world half machinery and half meat.