Farragut was working then part-time with the greenhouse crew, culling lawns and hedges, and part-time as a typist, cutting ditto sheets for the prison announcements. He had the key to an office near the squad room and the use of a typewriter. He continued to meet Jody at the water tower and later, when the afternoons got cold, in his office. They had known one another a month when they became lovers. "I'm so glad you ain't homosexual,'' Jody kept saying when he caressed Farragut's hair. Then, saying as much one afternoon, he had unfastened Farragut's trousers and, with every assistance from Farragut, got them down around his knees. From what Farragut had read in the newspapers about prison life he had expected this to happen, but what he had not expected was that this grotesque bonding of their relationship would provoke in him so profound a love. Nor had he expected the administration to be so lenient. For a small ration of cigarettes, Tiny let Farragut return to the shop between chow and lockup. Jody met him there and they made love on the floor. "They like it," Jody explained. "At first they didn't like it. Then some psychologist decided that if we got our rocks moved regularly we wouldn't riot. They'll let us do anything if they think it will keep us from rioting. Move over, Chicken, move over. Oh, I love you very much."
They met two or three times a week. Jody was the beloved and now and then he stood Farragut up so that Farragut had developed a preternatural sensitivity to the squeak of his lover's basketball sneakers. On some nights his life seemed to hang on the sound. When the classes in banking began, the two men met always on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Jody reported on his experience with the university. Farragut had boosted a mattress from the shop and Jody had hustled a hot plate from somewhere, and they lay on the mattress and drank hot coffee and were fairly comfortable and happy.
But Jody spoke skeptically to Farragut about the university. "It's the same old shit," said Jody. " Success School, Charm School. Elite School. How to Make a Million School. I been to them all and they're all the same. You see, Chicken, banking arithmetic and all that shit is done by computers today and what you have to concentrate on is to inspire the confidence of the potential investor. That's the big mystery of modern banking. For instance, you come on with the smile. Every class I took begins with lessons in this smile. You stand outside the door thinking about all the great things that happened to you that day, that year, for your whole life. It has to be real. You can't fake this selling smile. I mean you remember a great girl who made you happy or winning a long shot if you ever had one or a new suit or a race you won or a great day when you really had everything going for you. Well, then you open the door and go in and smack him with this smile. Only they don't know nothing, Chicken. I mean about smiling. They don't know nothing at all about smiling.
"It's all right to smile, I mean you have to smile to sell anything, but if you don't smile in the right way you get terrible lines on your face like you have. I love you, Chicken, but you don't know how to smile. If you knew how to smile you wouldn't have those wrinkles all around your eyes and those big, disgusting cuts like scars on your face. Look at me, for example. You think I'm twenty-four, don't you? Well, I'm actually thirty-two, but most people when they're asked to guess my age put me down for eighteen or nineteen at the mast. That's because I know how to smile, how to use my face. This actor taught me. He was in on a morals charge but he was very beautiful. He taught me that when you use your face you spare your face. When you throw your face recklessly into every situation you come up against, you come out looking like you do, you come out looking like shit. I love you, Chicken, I really do, otherwise I wouldn't tell you that you got a ruined face.
Now watch me smile. See? I look real happy-don't I, don't I, don't I?-but if you'll notice, I keep my eyes wide open so I won't get disgusting wrinkles all around the edges like you have and when I open my mouth I open it very, very wide so that it won't destroy the beauty of my cheeks, their beauty and smoothness. This teacher from the university tells us to smile, smile, smile, smile, but you go around smiling all the time like he teaches us to, you get to look like a very old person, a very old and haggard person who nobody wants anything to do with especially in the line of banking investments."
When Jody talked scornfully about the Fiduciary University, Farragut's attitude seemed parental, seemed to express some abiding respect for anything that was taught by an organization, however false the teaching and however benighted the organization. Listening to Jody describe the Fiduciary University as shit made Farragut wonder if disrespect was not at the bottom of Jody's criminal career and his life in prison. He felt that Jody should bring more patience, more intelligence, to his attacks on the university'. It may have been no more than the fact that the word "fiduciary" seemed to him to deserve respect and inspire honesty; and in its train were thrift, industry, frugality and honest strife.
In fact, Jody's attacks on the university' were continuous, predictable and, in the end, monotonous. Everything about the school was wrong. The teacher was ruining his face with too broad and committed a smile. The spot quizzes were too easy. "I don't do no work," Jody said, "and I always get the highest marks in the class. I got this memory. It's easy for me to remember things. I learned the whole catechism in one night. Now, today we had Nostalgia. You think it's got something to do with your nose. It don't. It's what you remember with pleasure. So what you do is your homework on what the potential investor remembers with pleasure and you play on his pleasant memories like a fucking violin. You not only stir up what they call Nostalgia with talk, you wear clothes and look and talk and use body language like something they're going to remember with pleasure. So the potential investor likes history, and can't you see me coming into the bank in a fucking suit of armor?"
"You're not taking it seriously, Jody," Farragut said. "There must be something worthwhile in it. I think you ought to pay more attention to what is useful in the course."
"Well, there may be something in it." Jody said, but you see I had it all before in Charm School, Success School, Elite School. It's all the same shit. I had it ten times before. Now, they tell me a man's name is for him the sweetest sound in the language. I know this, when I was three, four years old. I know the whole thing. You want to hear it? Listen."
Jody ticked off his points on the bars of Farragut's cell. "One. Let the other fellow feel that all the good ideas are his. Two. Throw-down a challenge. Three. Open up with praise and honest appreciation. Four. If you're wrong admit it quickly. Five. Get the other person saying yes. Six. Talk about your mistakes. Seven. Let the other man save his face. Eight. Use encouragement. Nine. Make the thing you want to do seem easy. Ten. Make the other person seem happy about doing what you want. Shit, man, any hustler knows that. That's my life, that's the story of my life. I've been doing all this ever since I was a little kid and look where it got me. Look where my knowledge of the essence of charm and success and banking dumped me. Shit, Chicken, I feel like quitting."
"Don't, Jody," said Farragut. "Stay with it. You'll graduate and it'll look good on your record."
"Nobody's going to look at my record for another forty years," said Jody.
He came one night. It was snowing. "Put in for sick call tomorrow," Jody said. "Monday, There'll be a crowd. I'll wait for you outside the infirmary." He was gone. "Don't he love you no more?" asked Tiny. "Well, if he don't love you no more it's a weight off my shoulders. You're really a nice guy, Farragut. I like you, but I got no use for him. He's blown half the population and he's hardly begun. Last week, the week before last-I can't remember-he did this fan dance on the third tier. Toledo told me about it. He had this piece of newspaper pleated, you know, like a fan and he kept switching it from his cock to his asshole and doing this dance. Toledo said it was very disgusting. Very disgusting." Farragut tried to imagine this and couldn't. What he felt was that Tiny was jealous. Tiny had never experienced the love of a man. Tiny was insecure. He made out his sick-call slip, put it between the bars and went to bed.