“Steve Victor.”
“Ste-— Hey! Wait a minute! I know you. I saw your picture in a magazine just recently. You’re the fellow that does those sex surveys.
“That’s right,” I admitted.
“Is that what you were doing here?” Keen blue eyes moved from me to the girl and back.
“Not exactly,” I hedged.
“No skin off my butt.” He grinned. It was a Chamber of Commerce grin, and he began to look more like an American businessman to me and less like John Wayne playing a soldier of fortune. With obvious diplomacy -- like an American legionnaire determined to forget the seamier side of the convention—he dropped the subject. “My name’s Randolph P. Austin,” he told us. “Randy to my friends. I’m in toilets.”
“You’re in what?” I’d been through a lot and I was feeling confused.
“Toilets. Johnny fixtures, you know. I make ’em. Just installed five thousand units in a new development right here in Saigon. Government contract. Not our government; theirs. Ky and the rest, you know. Pretty sharp, those boys. The kickbacks I could tell you about!”
“You mean you work for a plumbing supply company?” I asked him.
“Work for it, hell. I own it. Lock, stock, and privy. I don’t like to blow my horn, Steve boy, but you’re looking at one of the biggest men in toilets in the whole world.”
“Gosh.” I tried to look impressed. It wasn’t hard. I was still pretty damn impressed with the way he’d saved my life. “I never met a toilet tycoon before,” I told him. “I never expected to meet one, either. And certainly not in the American Embassy at Saigon in the middle of a war.”
“Well, I just happened to be visiting here when the trouble broke out. So I grabbed a gun and pitched in to help. Hell, we’re Americans, and we’re all in the same boat.”
“Well, you sure kept our boat from sinking,” I said earnestly. “And I just want you to know that I appreciate it, Randy. If there’s ever any way that I can return the favor-—any time, any place—-you just tell me. I promise you that whatever it is, I’ll do it.” The thing is I only have one life and I felt pretty strongly about living it. I really meant what I said to him.
“Hell, Steve, I’ve got just about everything a man could want.” He chuckled. “But if I ever need a sex survey, I’ll take you up on that. And if you ever need a toilet-—” he winked-— “you call on me and I’ll see you get thirty off!”
“You’ve already done enough for me, Randy. But I mean it. I’m in your debt for life, and if there’s ever anything at all-—”
“Well, okay.” He was obviously embarrassed. “If I ever do need a favor from you, Steve, I won’t hesitate to ask.”
It was obvious from his face that he never thought the occasion would arise. Certainly-—although I was utterly sincere—I didn’t think it would either. But we were both wrong !
It was six months later that Randolph P. Austin called on me to make good on my offer. He needed a favor. And what a favor!
It was a doozy!
CHAPTER TWO
Randolph P. Austins call couldn’t have come at a more inopportune moment. I was between women when the phone rang. Literally -- like a glob of cream cheese trapped between two pieces of toast.
Below me it was wry-—a seemingly hip New York chick trying to accept the situation philosophically although embarrassed at our mutual nudity. Above there was a lot of crust—my mother, mad as hell at having discovered her son in flagrante delicto. Between them I was crumbling with indecision—-belly warmed by my fleshy perch, buttocks shivering from the icy wind of Mama’s rage.
“That I should find a son of mine like this, in bed, with a girl, naked yet!” She sucked in a breath on the last word and kept talking without a noticeable pause. “For such disgraceful things he’s got time, but for his mother does he have time? No! For a mother there is no time. An hour only on the subway to the Bronx and a lonely mother it takes from Greenwich Village-—why do you live in such a Godforsaken spot, no good could come of it, just look at the goings-on, I’m not surprised this hussy should wangle her way into your bed without clothes yet!—but you should take the hour and make the trip to find out if I’m alive or dead or maybe sick? Hah! I should live so long! You’re too busy maybe getting funereal disease or sinfulness or gono-who-knows to remember even you’ve got a mother! Your phone is ringing.”
“Now just a minute!” The young lady under me started to get indignant. “You can’t talk about me like that! What kind of girl do you think I am? Answer the telephone.”
“Such a question she’s got the chutzpah to ask and without a stitch on while the least the two of you could do is stop when I’m talking to you! That my son should forget he has a mother and take up with a shameless shiksa! Oy vey! So answer the phone already.”
“Mom, why are you talking this way?” I asked quietly. “You’re not even Jewish.”
“She doesn’t have to be Jewish to be a Jewish mother,” the girl reminded me. “Aren’t you going to answer the phone?”
“If you live in the Bronx as long as I have, you’re Jewish even it you’re Italian. So pick up the receiver.”
“You’re not Italian either,” I recalled.
“Even if you’re Irish! You’re not going to answer it, maybe it’s an emergency, how could you tell?”
“You’re not Iri-—”
“It’s a manner of speaking only. With the heartburn I got all the time from a son doesn’t even know I’m among the living, I might as well convert, but who needs to, even a Rabbi couldn’t tell the difference with my tsouris. Steven, answer the phone, it’s ringing in my head so I’m going out of my mind already yet.”
“Hello?” I answered the phone.
“Hello. Is this Steve Victor?”
“So what is it?” My mother clutched her breast. “Who died?”
“I don’t know yet.” I covered the mouthpiece. “He just asked me if I’m Steve Victor.”
“Don’t tell him without you find out first who it is. It might be a burglar, he’s -- what do they say?—-casing the joint, he should come up and kill you and steal Grandpa’s watch he said I should give you on his deathbed. Or maybe a mail order salesman, you get on their list, you can’t get off, they got you down for cancer and leprosy and infantile paresis with a hand in your pocket every time you go to the door, you couldn’t take time out to go to the bathroom. So don’t just sit there, the cat got your tonsils, ask. Ask who it is already. Ask!”
“Who’s this?” I said into the mouthpiece.
“This is Randolph P. Austin, old buddy. Randy. Remember me?”
“So who?” my mother demanded.
“It’s the man who saved my life in Saigon.”
“Aha! He wants something! Be careful!”
“Hi, Randy. What can I do for you?”
“Oy! Such a question! I tell him to be careful and he asks such a question! What do you think of that?”
“He’s not too bright.” The girl under me had decided to try to placate my mother.
“Who asked you?” Mama was icy even if she did agree.
“You remember you once said if I ever needed a favor . . .” Randy was saying.
“Sure. Name it.”
“You’re getting heavy,” the girl said.
“Stevie, you’ve got a macka on your heinie,” my mother noticed.
“It’s just a goose pimple,” I told her. “I’m cold.”
“A pimple is a pimple!” She was firm. “And cover up! You’ll catch pneumonia in your generals yet.”