Then Hicks changed clothes, packed his bag, and went to the terminal sick bay to make an early morning appointment for his mandatory chest x ray. He planned to return in the morning with his appointment slip, driving through the gate nearest the sick bay, pick up his package from the trash can before the morning cleaners emptied it, and then drive out through the gate he had entered with the package concealed under a fender.
His normal procedure was to send his dope ashore in the plane parts and recover it from the railroad siding from which the parts were shipped to the repair facilities, but he had heard that the sidings were carefully watched now and the parts sniffed over by dogs. His present plan seemed to him audacious but sound.
The gate search he passed through on his way to the parking lot was thorough and businesslike, worse than he had ever seen it. When it was over, he started his car with difficulty and drove downtown to the Seaman’s YMCA.
At the Y, he engaged a room and lay down on the bed for a while. When it grew dark he was able to discern the peephole in the door through which it was said the military police spied on the military personnel to see if they were buggering each other.
He was restless in the face of dead time. Hours of vacant unease had to be passed before he could return to cop his weight; self-discipline permitted, or required, light uncomplicated diversion.
When he went downstairs he saw that the lights above Oakland had come on, and the sky behind them was like deep blue marble. Even skid row smelled of eucalyptus. He was unmoved.
On a corner two blocks from the Y was a bar called the Golden Gateway. A sign over its side door read: liquor beer food — Home of the Seafarers Club. Another sign made of cardboard, resting against the Venetian blinds in the window, announced Seven Topless Dancers.
At one time the Golden Gateway had sold good cheap Italian food and there were pool tables in the back. The pool tables were gone now and the kitchen with them; in their place was a large cage with pink bars, inside of which girls of various colors and conditions frapped themselves to music from the jukebox. Since the cage was installed, all manner of people fell by. Escaped lunatics up from Agnew came to engage the suburbanites who came to engage rough trade. There were agents representing every agency, and a contingent of neighborhood blacks who did their business there and never seemed to enjoy themselves. Finnish Alex, a bartender under the old regime, managed the place now, assisted by three shark-eyed barmaids.
Hicks went in, thinking he might bullshit with Alex for a while, but it was not much of a place to bullshit anymore. He was shortly drinking hard, following bourbon two-fers with nip bottles of Lucky Lager. The go-go girls were an affront to sex, and Hicks was mildly scandalized by the fact that one of them appeared to be Japanese. The false canine on the upper right side of his mouth began to ache.
Drunk now, he went to the gents’, took the tooth out and ran cold water over it, and rubbed it with a clean handkerchief. It seemed like a good idea. He replaced his tooth, pissed, and went out, walking toward the bar in solemn processional step. A party of blacks watched him from their table like medical students regarding a charity patient with a curious low disease.
At the bar, he got to speak with Alex for the first time.
“I feel like a walking pair of teeth,” he told him.
That means you’re drunk,” Alex said. For Alex, almost everything meant that. “What kind of trip you have?”
“Good,” Hicks said. “A good trip.”
“They still got that good pussy over there?” Hicks leaned his elbows on the bar and belched. “Yeah,” he said. “When you gonna go back?”
“Soon as I can get out. I want to put some money by and take a vacation. Go down to Mexico for a while.”
“Mexico, that’s a good place. They got that good pussy down there.”
Hicks looked up at the girls in the cage.
“What a lot of shit this place is now,” he told Alex. “Why do I have to look at those poor junkies? Christ, I just as soon look at you up there.”
“I ain’t got a costume,” Alex said.
Hicks reached out and pushed him back against the booze locker.
“You got bigger tits, though.”
Alex served him another nip.
“When you say you was goin’ to Mexico?”
“I didn’t say I was.”
“Yes, you did. You just said you was.”
“That’s a dream,” Hicks told him. “A dream.”
“Ever see Coley?”
Coley was a dealer who had also worked for Sea Lift Command and had quit when paranoia overcame him. Hicks swallowed his beer and tapped on the upper tooth with his forefinger.
“Coley?”
“You know Coley,” Alex said. “You used to drink with him here.”
“Oh, yeah,” Hicks said, watching Alex. “Sure. Him.”
“I hear he went to Mexico.”
“Yeah?”
“They say he went down there with a whole lot of money
to buy something for somebody and he blew it all.”
“Blew it all on the jai ‘lai, huh?”
“Blew it all on the good pussy. People are real pissed at him.”
Hicks was about to say that he would be real pissed too if it was his money, but he let it pass. He had never heard Alex talk around dope before.
When the record on the box finished, the girls from the cage climbed down and wrapped some sequined cloth around themselves. One of the girls was a mocha-colored East Indian with the features of a brahmin; she went to sit with a slightly frayed executive type at a back table.
“The guy’s a bug,” Alex said, looking at them. “He ties her up and beats on her. She loves it. They’re both bugs.”
Hicks stood up.
“I don’t want to know all this shit, man,” he said. “I don’t want to know it.” He walked back toward the telephone booth through knots of drinking blacks.
Christ, there’s a lot of them, he thought.
As he walked he tried to maneuver himself in such a way that he would not have to make anyone back up for him, or himself have to back up for anyone. He weaved skillfully among the black customers projecting a genial demeanor, but they seemed only to see the murder in his heart. They were funny folks.
Inside the booth, he secured the door with his foot and thumbed through the phone book. He could not re member deciding to call her. It was just happening.
Etsuko’s second husband was named Eligio Robles, D.D.S. On deciding to leave Hicks she had enrolled in a dental technology course, financing herself by years of petty hoarding. Her English was good enough by then. Dr. Robles was a Filipino, her very first employer.
Humming to himself, he dialed Dr. Robles’ number. And she answered.
“Konibanwa Etsuko? Shitsurayu Mrs. Robles-san.”
“It’s you,” she said.
It seemed to him that he could picture her face exactly as she calmly attempted to determine what the call might mean.
“How’s everything?”
“Fine. How’s everything with you?”
“I just got back from Nam.”
“How was that?” Not that she gave a shit, he thought.
“Fucked up.”
She made no sound, but the line itself seemed to convey her impatience with his profanity.
“How’s the good doc?”
“None of your business.”
“I got some trouble with my teeth. You think he could fix me up?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“He’s a dentist, ain’t he?”
He took the tooth out again and held it in his handkerchief.