“Well, Arnie,” Dortmunder said, following him across the threshold, “I got these guys downstairs, you know, by the van, they just wanna show you this stuff we got.”
“Oh, sure,” Arnie said, “we don’t wanna keep nobody waiting. Hold on, I’ll just get my coat.”
Arnie’s apartment, small underfurnished rooms with big dirty windows showing no views, was decorated mostly with his calendar collection, walls festooned in Januarys from all over the twentieth century, under pictures of girls in short skirts in high winds, kittens in wicker baskets with balls of yarn, paddle-wheel steamers, and much, much more. Much more.
While Arnie went on into his bedroom to get his coat, Dortmunder waited in the living room among the Januarys, and some Mays and Novembers, too (incompletes), and called after him, “Arnie? How come you’re the new you?”
Arnie came back, shrugging into a drab and raggedy black coat you wouldn’t let a barn cat sleep on, and said, “You remember, last time you was here, I’d come down with something.”
Salsa. “You were ill,” Dortmunder understated.
“I looked like a torture victim,” Arnie said, more accurately. “Finally, my doctor wouldn’t see me no more, wouldn’t even hear me no more, he said I was the reason the Board of Health shut down his waiting room, so he passed me on to this like referral doctor, you know, the doctor all the other doctors refer you to whenever they’re away.”
“Which is whenever,” Dortmunder said.
“You got it. Well, this guy, this referral doctor, turns out, he’s okay, he’s like making a comeback from parole, and after he cured me of the ooze thing he said, ‘Lemme give you a second opinion, you’re also obnoxious,’ and I said, ‘I know it, doctor, you don’t have to tell me, I’m so hard to be around I sometimes shave with my back to the mirror,’ and he said take these pills, so I’m taking them.”
Dortmunder said, “Pills. You mean like Prozac?”
“This stuff is to Prozac,” Arnie said, “like sour mash is to sassafras. How in hell it’s legal I will never know, and if this is legal how in hell anything else is illegal I’ll also never know.”
“But it did the job, huh?” Dortmunder said. “You aren’t obnoxious anymore.”
“Oh, no, John Dortmunder, not like that,” Arnie said. “I’m as obnoxious as I ever was, believe me, when the shock wears off, you’ll begin to notice for yourself, but I’m not angry about it anymore. I have come to accept my inner scumbag. It makes all the difference.”
“Well, that’s great, Arnie,” Dortmunder said, though not as enthusiastically as he’d hoped. Apparently, he was going to lie to the new Arnie as much as he used to lie to the old one.
Arnie once again showed Dortmunder his new smile. His teeth were not of the best. “So, John Dortmunder,” he said, “you’re doin so good these days, you’re bringin me the stuff in vanloads, is that it?”
“Pretty much,” Dortmunder agreed. “We got a variety of stuff down here.”
“Do I want my loupe?”
“Maybe so.”
“And my Polaroid camera?”
“Could be.”
“And my gold-weighing scale?”
“I’m beginning to wonder,” Dortmunder said, “if maybe we should just drive the van up the stairs and into the apartment.”
“Nah, never mind, John Dortmunder. We’ll go down and see what you got.”
So they went down to see what they got, and what they got was three guys loitering very obviously around the Erstwhile van. Fortunately, no law-enforcement elements had yet noticed them, so it was okay.
“Well, hey, Andy Kelp,” Arnie said, coming down the stoop with his very best new smile, “John Dortmunder didn’t say we was all gonna be old friends around here.”
Kelp blinked, looked glazed, and said, “Arnie?”
“But we’re not all old friends,” Arnie corrected himself, looking at the other two. “John Dortmunder, introduce me to your pals.”
“This is Arnie,” Dortmunder said, “and that’s Stan and that’s Tiny.”
“And how do you do? I won’t offer to shake hands,” Arnie said, to general relief, “because I know some people got feelings about germs, in fact, I got feelings about germs myself, for very good reasons, which we needn’t go into,” he said, to general relief, “except believe me, I know, my experiences have not all been sunny ones, and I take it this is the van here.”
Dortmunder recovered first. “Yeah, this is it, Andy’s got the key to the rear door.”
“Oh, yeah,” Kelp said, “I do, don’t I?” Reaching in his pocket, he waggled eyebrows at Dortmunder behind Arnie’s back: What’s with Arnie? Dortmunder rolled his eyes and shook his head: Don’t ask.
Kelp unlocked the rear doors of the van and opened the left one, to shield the loot from pedestrians. Arnie leaned forward to peer in, then paused and sniffed and said, “Scrod. Wait a minute, halibut. Wait a minute, perch.”
Dortmunder said, “Arnie, we aren’t selling you fish.”
Arnie nodded over his shoulder at Dortmunder. “Oh, I know,” he said. “I’m just trying out my new nose. The pills have this side effect, they improve my sense of smell, which, given me, you know, is a mixed blessing. Hold on, lemme see what we got here.”
“Sure,” Dortmunder said.
Arnie climbed into the van and started whistling. Unless it was Schoenberg, it was off-key.
“A little of your friend here,” Tiny said, “goes a long way.”
Stan said, “I’m ready for him to go a long way. I’ll help him pick out the route.”
“This is the improved version,” Dortmunder assured them.
“Actually, John,” Kelp said, “he is better than he was. Different anyway.”
“He’s being treated by a doctor,” Dortmunder explained.
Tiny said, “Yeah? No doctor ever stood me a round.”
“Everybody knows my feelings about doctors,” Kelp said, and Arnie backed out of the van, still whistling. Then he stopped whistling, nodded at everybody, and said, “What you got there is your basic mixed bag in there.”
Tiny said, “It all come from one place.”
“Maybe,” Arnie acknowledged, “but before that, it all come from all over the place.”
Dortmunder explained, “The guy was a collector.”
“You said it,” Arnie agreed. “Okay, some of this I can move to antiques guys upstate, some has to go out of the country and come back in to be museum-worthy, and some we’ll have to melt down for whatever. In any event, it should be nice. Worth the detour.”
“How much?” Dortmunder asked.
“Eventually, it could be nice,” Arnie told him. “You know me, John Dortmunder, I give top dollar. Even now when people can maybe stand to be around me, at least for a little while, even now, when maybe I wouldn’t have to give top dollar no more, even now, the habit is so strong, and my new pleasantness is so intense, even now I give top dollar.”
“Okay,” Dortmunder said.
“But not today,” Arnie said. “And by the way, I got no use for the van.”
“Not the van,” Kelp said. “I gotta return the van.”
Arnie nodded. “I take it, Andy Kelp,” he said, “you are the driver of the van.”
“Sure,” Kelp said.
“I’m gonna give you an address in Queens,” Arnie told him, “a bathroom fixtures wholesaler, you’re gonna go there and ask for Maureen, who I’m gonna call, and she’ll have a box there for you to unload everything in, and from time to time, as we lower this inventory here, you’ll get a little something.”
Stan said, “What about today?”
“Today,” Arnie said, “I can give you four G, on account.”
Tiny said, “On accounta what?”
“On accounta that’s how much cash I got upstairs,” Arnie explained. “So come along, Andy Kelp, come upstairs, I’ll give you that address and the cash and I’ll show you some new incompletes, they’ll knock your eyes out. I got one from a hospital, you won’t believe it, the picture’s their ER’s new waiting room.”