“Good night, young lady. The breath of me heart to you.”
“Oh, my,” Vivian said. “Oh, my.”
Quinn pulled the car into the garage and opened the side door to the house with his key and let George and Renata enter, up the stairs to the kitchen. He locked the door after them and padlocked the garage. He went to the front door to check the mailbox, tucked the letters between the pages of a magazine, picked up the Knickerbocker News inside the vestibule door, and opened the inner door with his key. George was standing in the living room with his hat on.
“Home the same day,” George said.
“Actually it’s the next day,” Quinn said. “It’s after one o’clock — already tomorrow. Take off your hat and stay awhile.”
George took off his hat and set it atop the bridge lamp. Quinn lit the lamp and took the hat off it. He put the mail on the coffee table and hung his coat and George’s hat on the coatrack in the dining room. He saw George’s bandage and asked, “Does your head hurt?”
“Not at all. Should it?”
“Not if you don’t think so. How are you feeling, are you ready for bed?”
George nodded. “Early to bed, early to rise, your girl goes out with two other guys.”
“Wisdom on the hoof.”
Renata came from the kitchen. “You want anything?” she asked.
“I’ll have a nightcap, rum on the rocks with a splash,” Quinn said. “Have one yourself.”
“Did you enjoy your day on the town?” she asked George.
“There was a facsimile about it that was very comfortable.”
“I’m glad you liked it. It was nice having Vivian as part of it.”
“Vivian.”
“You remember Vivian?”
“I’d have to go to the book.”
“She was your dancing partner tonight.”
“That was Paggy. Pog.”
“You’re thinking of Peg,” Quinn said.
“Peg.”
“Peg Phelan. Margaret. You married her. Your wife, Peg.”
“Peg was a wonderful girl. She danced every dance. She was strong but not tough.”
“What does that mean — not tough?”
“Good and honest. She wouldn’t let anybody cut in.”
“Do you remember how you asked her to marry you?”
“Why do you ask such a question?”
“I never heard you talk about marrying her. I always wondered how it happened.”
“Don’t you love your girl, for chrissake?”
“I do.”
“I let her down, but she still comes around to love what’s left of me. I have no room in my heart for the blues.”
“That’s a fine attitude. Do you remember that Peg was my mother?”
“Was she? God bless you.” He stared at Quinn, a long silence.
“Do you remember?”
He nodded. He looked at Renata and back to Quinn. “You were the one and only one that come to us. You were my doll.”
“I’m glad I got here.”
George looked around the room. “You can’t beat this hotel. Everything here is very katish.”
“We do our best. We’re pleased you’re staying here. I think it’s bedtime.”
“Bedtime,” George said. “There’s always room for one more.” He found his hat and went up the stairs. Renata went to the kitchen.
Quinn turned on the television and found a Bobby Kennedy retrospective, but no new news about his condition on any station. He went back to the retrospective — Bobby having his clothes ripped off like a rock star in the campaign for president. The crowd loved every inch of him. “We want Kennedy,” they screamed. Quinn turned off the volume and let the images continue.
He sat on the sofa and looked at the maiclass="underline" a letter from his publisher suggesting a schedule for publicizing his novel, signings at two local bookstores, a radio interview in New York, three local radio interviews, all of which add up to no push, no weight. So the book will develop momentum by itself, or it won’t. Also, a letter from the Albany County Sheriff to George Quinn, dated yesterday. In terse sentences the sheriff notified George that as of May 15, 1968, he had been taken off the payroll and his service in the Sheriff’s Office and the courts was terminated. George had not gone to work since his two cataract operations three months ago. He’d been in his slow fade for some months, who can count, but Quinn blamed the general anaesthesia the doctor gave him for its acceleration. The operation had begun with a milder sedative but it didn’t sedate, and George kicked a nurse when someone touched his eye. The operations were a success but the patient went senile.
His weekly paycheck had arrived punctually until two weeks ago, a harbinger, and not really unreasonable after three months; but this belated letter had an edge to it: after the ejection of Martin Daugherty from the Ann Lee Home we have the ejection of George Quinn, both coinciding with the decision by the Democratic politicians to punish Matt and Quinn, a pair of pains in the ass, by punishing their fathers. The district attorney had smiled at Quinn yesterday in a corridor at the Court House and said cryptically but jovially, “You forgot your father.” Quinn the reporter should have considered the fallout before publishing all that slum blather against the Mayor and the Party.
Renata came into the parlor bearing solace, two rums on the rocks, extra ice, and the bottle of Bacardi dark from Puerto Rico, where the distillery had relocated after Fidel won the war. Quinn watched her move and saw in her all the elements he had always loved; also saw another creature with no resemblance to the originaclass="underline" a chameleon, duplicitous, schizoid. But you bought into it, Quinn. Yes, but how could I have understood such shape-shifting when I was under the influence of the simple declarative sentence? The simple declarative sentence is an illusion.
“Did I put too much water?”
“Not at all,” said Quinn, tasting.
“What’s the mail?”
“I have a useless book tour ahead of me, and George has been fired.”
“Why?”
“Why is the book tour useless or why George?”
“George.”
“He’s overdue at the office and he can’t think or function or even find the Court House without a guide. It was inevitable. They’ve been kind to George even though they think they’re punishing me by firing him. We lose his $34.50. How can we possibly live without it?”
“They did the same thing to Matt’s father.”
“You are perspicacious. We hurt them, they hurt us. I decided to write a novel about it.”
“About George being fired?”
“About him, Matt and Martin, Tremont, Roy, Zuki, you, me, the Mayor, Gloria and Max, and on it goes. No end to the cast of characters.”
“Do you want a refill?”
“The last time I refused a drink. Did you hear Martin and Pop talking about World War One tonight?”
“Bits.”
“Pop always told World War stories, also his father’s stories — from the Civil War, and riding with the ragtag Fenians, and with those ex-slaves fighting Spaniards in Cuba. But he was only eight when his father died, and he never sorted out the specifics of any of those wars.”
“So your new novel is about George?”
“More about you than George.”
“I’m not worth a novel.”
“You’re worth two or three novels. I have to put Tremont in it too. He’s worth two or three novels. If I wrote your story would you be afraid of it?”
“You don’t know my story.”
“I know quite a lot.”
“I’m not afraid of what you know.”
“You should be.”
“Your own imagination is all you know.”
“It is a novel, after all. I’d have to write about our reunion at the Fontainebleau, that lovely mobbed-up luxury.”
“That was Alfie. Max asked him about a hotel on the Beach and Alfie made a call to one of his friends.”