"Save your cuteness for somebody else, will you, Alice?" said Spencer. "Now sober up, I want you to meet someone. Thomas, this tawdry baggage is Alice Faber. Alice, this is Thomas, a friend of mine. He needs a place to sleep tonight."
"Good Heavens!" Alice exclaimed, looking at Thomas for the first time. "He's all bloody! You're all bloody! Did somebody knife you?"
"No," said Thomas, embarrassed. "I… uh, was shot at. There was this old guy with an armload of books, and—"
"We'll have to get you cleaned up," she interrupted, taking him by the arm. "I won't do it, but Jean will. I get sick if I see blood. Really. Jean!"
"I'll see you later." Spencer said. "When the girls are through with you, there's somebody you must talk to."
"Okay," Thomas replied as he allowed Alice to guide him down a tightly curving stairway to another, wider hallway.
"She's probably in the greenroom," Alice said. "Hey, Jean!"
"Yeah?" came a lazy call.
"Come out here and clean up this young man who's been shot! He'll bleed to death right here if you don't move fast."
"I'm not bleeding," protested Thomas.
A tall, thin girl emerged from a doorway. Her tired, sarcastic expression became alert when she saw Thomas swaying in the hall, leaning on Alice's arm and looking pale and exhausted in his ragged, blood-streaked robe.
"It's not as bad as it looks," Thomas said. "The bullet just creased me, really…"
The sudden shift to the inside warmth from the chilly air had made him dizzy, and he wasn't sure what he was saying. Jean was standing in front of him now, he noticed, and had apparently asked him a question. Probably asked me my name, he thought; he was still trying to pronounce "Thomas" when her face slid away above him and the back of his head struck the floor.
CHAPTER 3: The Misunderstanding in Pershing Square
"Well now, Spencer. What's this I hear about you taking in a stray monk? What if—" The voice became softer. "Oh, is that him?"
"Yes sir," came a whisper. "I figured he might be your Touchstone."
"Well, let's not jump the gun here. Let's see… he looks okay, I guess. Is he smart?"
"He's read Shakespeare. And he's completely adrift— has some crazy idea of going to San Pedro and becoming a sailor."
"Hmm!" An odd, slow bumping-and-sliding sound was repeated several times. "Hand me my cigars, would you, Spencer? Thanks." There was the scratch and hiss of a match being struck.
The sharp smell of tobacco fumes finally pulled Thomas into complete wakefulness. He opened his eyes to find himself face-to-face with a great stone head that rested on a shelf a few centimeters away. It was larger than life, and although the forehead and part of the thick, wavy hair were chipped, and the nose was entirely broken off, Thomas could see that it was a fine piece of craftsmanship. The shelves above and below the head were cluttered with bundles of colored paper, a stack of cardboard swords with tinfoil-wrapped blades, a number of grotesque wooden masks, and piles and piles of crumpled, glitterly cloth.
"Oh hell. I'd have done just what you did, Spencer. Of course with our luck we'll no sooner get St. Francis here really good in the role than Klein will reappear."
"Don't be pessimistic."
"I have to be, I'm the manager." Thomas heard the ponderous bump-and-slide again. "Has he eaten anything within the last couple of days? He looks like one of the old Nevada atrocity posters."
Thomas sat up slowly, scratching his head. "You did say something about soup," he reminded Spencer.
Next to Spencer stood a bearded bald-headed man with a thick cigar clamped between his teeth. The burly man was propped up awkwardly on a pair of crutches, and Thomas recognized the source of the bump-and-slide sound.
"Spencer told me your name," the man said, "but I've forgotten it. Francis? Rufus?"
"Thomas," supplied both young men at once.
"Oh yes, that's right." He poled his bulk laboriously across the room and thrust his hand toward Thomas. "I'm Nathan Gladhand."
Thomas shook the muscular paw, and Gladhand lowered himself into a wicker chair. "Jean said you'd be unconscious until morning," he said, laying the crutches on the floor beside him.
"It was the mention of food that snapped me out of it," Thomas said, hoping that wasn't too broad a hint.
"Get him some soup, will you Spencer? And bring a bottle of cognac and three glasses." Spencer darted out of the room.
"Where are we?" asked Thomas, peering around at the high-ceilinged chamber. A flickering lantern nearby illuminated endless piles of poles, plywood and boxes.
"In the theater basement," Gladhand said. "You can sleep here. Listen," he added, fixing Thomas with a direct stare, "I don't mind helping a distressed traveler—I've been one myself, often enough—but I won't keep freeloaders." He held up his hand to silence Thomas's protests. "What I'm trying to say is—you're welcome to stay as long as you like."
"That's what you were trying to say?"
"Let me finish, will you? What I mean is, you can work here."
"Oh. Doing what?"
"That depends. Spencer says you've read Shakespeare. Who else have you read?"
"Oh… Byron, Kipling, Baudelaire, Ashbless…"
"You go for poetry, eh?"
"Yes sir. I, uh… hope to publish some poems of my own, sometime."
"Of course you do." A tarnished brass woman stood with upraised arms beside Gladhand's chair, and he tapped his cigar ash onto her head. "Spencer may have mentioned that I'm putting on As You Like It here. We're supposed to open two weeks from now, and the guy who was playing Touchstone left the day before yesterday. Just walked out."
"You want me to play Touchstone," Thomas said.
"Right. Not that I'd even consider you, of course, if experienced actors were available." He blew smoke toward the ceiling. "Which they aren't. You'll receive no salary, but you'll get room and board, which is not something to snap your fingers at these days."
Thomas shrugged, and noticed for the first time that he was wearing a long woolen bathrobe. "I'll do it," he said. "Where are my clothes, by the way?"
"Your robe we burned. The sandals we gave to an old Olive Street beggar named Ben Corwin. We'll give you new clothes, don't worry about it."
Spencer angled his way into the room, a steaming bowl and a bottle clutched in one hand, three glasses in the other, and a folding table wedged under his arm.
"Jacques" Gladhand pronounced it jay-queez— "meet the new Touchstone."
Spencer set up the table and placed the soup, bottle and glasses on it. "By God," he said, handing Thomas a spoon he'd carried in his pocket, "it's good to have you aboard."
"Thank you," smiled Thomas, taking the spoon with as formal a bow as he could manage.
Gladhand leaned forward and poured an inch of the brandy into each glass. "Any business at all today, Spencer?"
"No. The welfare board was locked and guarded, the permit bureau never opened its gates, same with the employment office, and even the breadlines were gone." He sat on a box and sipped the cognac. "I'll try it tomorrow, early. It can't stay this way for long."
"What do you do, Spencer?" Thomas asked, stirring his hot chicken broth to cool it.
"I hold places in lines." Seeing Thomas's puzzled look, he continued. "Handouts, jobs, housing, medicine… you have to wait in long lines for those things nowadays. I have a friend who does clerical work for the police—she's human, let me add, not an android— and she tells me in advance what's being given out, and where. I get there early, wait until the line is about three blocks long, and then sell my place to the highest bidder. The people at the tail end of the line know that whatever is being given out will be gone before they get to it, see, so they walk up and down the column, offering to buy places."