CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Francis strolled casually around the waterfront district wearing the expression of someone who has lost something and is looking for it without much hope of finding it.
He turned a corner past Mme. Herz's Emporium and strolled on. Around him heaved and surged the business life of a busy ocean port; activity pleasantly masculine, for the most part, if perhaps a bit too overripe taken as a generality. The added mixture of Oriental grace notes served as a delicate contrast to the grosser elements of the scene; a cargo of Chinese temple bells, for instance, setting off and in a way commenting on the lusty obscenities of Irish and Scandinavian stevedores loading a grand piano onto a packet intended for a brothel in Nome.
But it wasn't for a study in whimsical mongrelization that Francis had come down to this roaring reeking part of town. He had serious business of his own to transact, if only he could find just the right circumstances.
Hmmm. In an alley between a whore shop and an incense importer's rickety warehouse a little tramp was hunkered over a small fire built of scraps, cooking a fish in a battered piece of tin shaped to the general outlines of a frying pan. Glancing in at the serious hunched back of the man, Francis paused and considered. Would he do? He would do.
Francis entered the alley, nodded amiably at the tramp and said, "Afternoon."
"Yuh," said the tramp. His concentration remained on his fish, but a certain bunching of his shoulder muscles indicated his awareness of-and attitude about-Francis's presence.
"My, that smells good," Francis said and smiled in a way that he hoped was disarming.
Not looking up, and so not disarmed by the smile, the tramp said in a sandpaper voice, "Not enough for two, pal. Sorry."
"No, no," Francis said, refusing the unmade offer with a fluttering of his fingers. "I wouldn't think of it. A man's dinner is a sacred thing."
The tramp nodded. "I always figured it that way," he said, giving his fish a poke with a little bent twig.
"It was as a fellow gourmet I was speaking," Francis told him.
"Yeah?" Noncommittal, still not looking up.
"The aroma," Francis said, "tells me you have the chef's touch."
Now at last the tramp did look up, suspicion and growing wonder conflicted in his expression. He faced Francis's disarming smile and said, "Yeah?" This time, with more credulity in it.
"You don't simply burn your food and shove it into your gullet," Francis assured him. "You prepare it." He spread his hands, as though smoothing sheets. "You respect it." His fingertips touched, in a semi-religious gesture. "You care for it." His hands closed slowly, gently around a ball of air.
The tramp smiled upward in awe. "Yeah," he said. He was amazed at himself. "Yeah, I do."
Francis sniffed, beamed in rapture, and closed his eyes, expressing ecstasy. He sniffed again, aware of the tramp's open-mouthed observance of his performance. He permitted a tiny purr to escape his closed mouth. He sniffed a third time-and paused. A tiny frown. One eye open. Doubt, hesitation. He appeared to question the lambent air.
The tramp looked worried. He too sniffed, with a noise Francis could have done without. He said, "Something wrong?"
Francis cocked his head to one side like a fox hearing the hunter's horn. He sniffed. "It's," he said, and paused to consider. His fingers dibbled in the air before his face. Sniff. "It's cooking too… slowly," he decided.
The tramp was barely breathing. He stared at Francis like a child at a magician, a bird at a snake.
Francis nodded, slow and deep. "Yes," he said. "Too slowly." He gave the tramp an open, honest, concerned look, as between equals. "Don't you sense it?"
The tramp turned his head to blink at his fish. "Yeah?"
"It's the breeze through the alley," Francis announced. "You know, if you were to push the fire a bit closer to the wall there…"
"Ya think so?"
"It will make all the difference," Francis told him. "Here, I'll help."
Between them, using other scraps of wood, they pushed the tiny fire over closer to the incense warehouse wall. The part Francis moved came right up next to the wall, though the tramp couldn't see that from the other side.
"There," Francis said, rising again and dusting off his knees. "Much better. You should start slicing your onion now."
The tramp frowned. "My onion?"
Francis expressed disbelief. "You're roasting fish without an onion?"
Embarrassed, the tramp moved his hands around vaguely and wouldn't meet Francis's eye. "Well, I, uh…"
"I'll give you mine."
The tramp looked at him, astonished. "Aw, say, pal…"
"No, I insist."
Francis took an onion from his pocket and held it up between thumb and first finger, again like a magician. "I can always get another," he said, and smiled fondly at the onion, as though he and it had been through much together that neither would ever forget.
"Pal," the tramp said, "you're a sport."
"Think nothing of it." Francis cleared a bit of ground away from the fire, and placed the onion in it like a model of the Taj Mahal. "Now," he said, "you slice it here."
"Right." The tramp pulled a folding knife from his pocket, opened it, rubbed it against his filthy pants, and hunkered over the onion. As he sawed carefully away, the pink tip of his tongue showed at the left corner of his mouth.
"Slice it very thin," Francis told him, "and spread it over the fish when you turn it for the last time. When the onion edges begin to brown, the fish is done. Just pour your butter sauce over it, and…"
"Yeah, yeah," the tramp said, sawing away. He tried to look like a man with a butter sauce. "That's right, yeah."
Francis gave him a look. "No butter?"
The tramp put down his knife and patted his pockets. "Today I kinda, you know, I was roughing it."
"Well, you go ahead and slice your onion," Francis told him, "and I'll go get the butter."
"Say, pal, you don't have to…"
"Fine cooking is its own reward," Francis said. Smiling again, he left the tramp slicing away at his onion, back to the fire. Already the warehouse wall was getting a charred look to it.
Francis walked back around the corner and past Mme. Herz's; a block later he found Officer McCorkle strolling along amid the heaving and the shouting, studying the world in silent suspicion. Francis hurried to catch up, calling, "Officer! Officer!"
McCorkle turned around, and glowered. "You," he said, without pleasure.
"Excuse me," Francis said, breathing a bit heavily. "I don't know the proper thing to do under the circumstances."
"What circumstances, Calhoun?"
"Is it necessary for me to find a fireman," Francis asked, "or can I report the fire to you?"
"WHAT??"
Francis turned and pointed. A block and a half away smoke was billowing from the mouth of the alley, and so was the tramp.