"Ha!" he snorted and snarled like his idol, Quinn.
(His parents thought they had brought the wrong baby home from the hospital, and in shame never had another. Mr. Franklin was a typewriter repairman and his wife cashiered in a restaurant in Bristol, Connecticut, and their son had an IQ upwards of immeasurability. They prevented him from reading until he was four by slapping the Reader's Digest out of his hands. They thought he wanted to tear out the pages. They hid him in a back room when friends came to play bridge because he always won. Once they discovered that he wasn't a freak, Franklin went on display throughout the neighborhood. He finished eight years of school in two, then missed four years because he wouldn't go, then two more because he failed when they made him attend school, but managed to finish with his original class which was all he wanted, anyway. His father's finest moment came as he decked the school psychologist for suggesting that the child might have family troubles. I once heard Franklin say, "I rather be dumb than have acne.")
Morning called the rest of the names, and they drank. Samuel Lloyd Levenson, the Jewish weasel, red-headed, freckle-faced, giggler, always naked in the barracks, but he would make it. William Frank Collins, he was called Mary, crewcut, pug-nosed American boy, mild segregationist, biology teacher, husband and father from Florida. Carl Milton Peterson, our kid, known as the Gray Ghoul for his thin, shallow face and mild manners, son of a Bemidji, Minnesota service station owner. Richard Dale Haddad, looked Jewish, had an Arabic name, but claimed to be Spanish, he was an operator, a big man in the blackmarket, balding at twenty-three like any other good young executive. Then Morning called my name, then his, and after he drank, he passed the list to me, and I called the names and we drank, and we all called the names until they answered no more.
At high noon: Cagle, Morning, Novotny, Quinn, a one-legged guitar player and pimp named Dominic who claimed to be a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, a Filipino homosexual hairdresser called Toni dressed in full drag, and me, who claimed by this time to be the last survivor of an Apache attack on Fort Dodge, Iowa. The other guys had platoons of empty bottles doing drill before them, while I couldn't even keep my scraggly squad in a good line of skirmishers. I thought those other bastards had been stealing my bottles just to emasculate me, but I couldn't catch them. The faster I drank, the further behind I got, and while my nose was nearly in my bottle, the others were too sober to trust. I suppose I did well, considering I took on the Trick's hard-core Townies. San Miguel ran about fifteen percent alcohol, and took getting used to.
At least I wasn't the only drunk. Peterson had simply dived out of his stool at 1015. Novotny took his money, and carried him out to a calesa. Outside he found Collins throwing up in the street, so he sent them off to the Trick's apartment to sleep. Levenson had roared away to the Factory for a quick three-peso piece, with Franklin right behind him. Haddad had gotten angry at Mama-san because she wouldn't let him do another flamenco on the bar like he did last Roll Call, so he left too, stamping and clapping and shouting Olé.
Finally the rest of us counted up our bottles, paid and said goodbye to Morning's two Filipino friends. As I stepped into the sunlight, the heat, the brilliance, knocked me silly. It was the light of the day that would never be night. Nothing, not the hand of God, nor the mere spinning of the earth, could put out that fire in the sky. We wandered down the street, the middle of the street, dodging our way through the sea of dusty gold.
"Sgt. Slag," Quinn said, "you look a little bit drunk."
"Nonsense, knave. It's these chuckholes in the highroad which cause me to use this particular peculiar gait. Chuckholes, my fellow. Indeed."
He laughed wildly, almost braying, his tooth flashing like a spark, and slapped me on the back.
"Avast there mate."
He laughed again. "You're okay for a fuckin' college guy. You might make it."
"And you also, kind squire, are a fine bit of a gentleman, a yeoman tiller of the soiled and a reveler."
We turned a corner somewhere. I could see the world. A wrinkled old woman, her graying hair wrapped into a bun, tended two baskets by the edge of the sidewalk. She squatted motionless, sucking on a black cigarette, the fire in her mouth, taking smoke with each breath of air. One basket held baluts, the nearly-hatched duck eggs which Filipinos considered delicious, and the other, small ears of corn toasted on coals.
"Haven't we met somewhere before, young lady. Perhaps Newport. Or was it Saratoga?" I was saying as Novotny came back to get me.
"Not her, man. She's worn out." The old woman hadn't moved. Smoke wisped around her small leathery nose each time she breathed.
"Ah, but she's beautiful. Don't you see? There's character in that face, those delicate wrinkles cut by the sharp knife of time. The dignity of age… 'It little profits that an idle king,/By this still hearth, among these barren crags,/Met with an aged wife…'"
"You buy balut," she asked suddenly, the con shining in her eyes as she looked up.
"Yes, mother, those who hustle, live. Yes." I paid twice the price, and walked away with Novotny, the egg warm and firm in my hand, begging to be thrown.
"You drunk?" he asked.
"I?"
"What are you going to do with that? Not going to eat it, huh?" he asked as I pitched the egg in the air.
"I had to lose my cherry sometime," I answered, tossing it higher and higher. It broke in my hand and a warm, stringy fluid dripped between my fingers. I squeezed it and the juice spat on the street and rolled up a fine film of dust. In my hand the shell pieces revealed the yellow, matted feathers of the stillborn duckling. I picked the shell away. The body lay in my hand like the victim of a shipwreck. I dropped the mess in the gutter and wiped my hand on my pants.
"What's all that about?" Novotny asked.
"Huh? Oh, it was a symbolic expression of the nihilism inherent in all human searches for pleasure, coupled with the paradox that pleasure is the basis of conservatism, the enemy of nihilism."
"Bullshit."
"Exactly."
He and I caught up with the others at the Keyhole, a quiet, dark bar with a few cushioned lounge chairs. I sat down in one, drank two more mouthfuls of beer, then passed out.
I awoke on my face. A button on a lumpy, raw-cotton mattress bit into my cheek. As I rolled over, I saw myself in a large mirror which hung at an angle over the narrow bed. Also reflected was a small naked girl sitting backwards on a chair next to the bed.
"Hey," she said, smiling, "you wake up now, huh? Good. Time to go soon. Good you wake up now."
"Who're you?" My head hurt and I was still whoozy.
"TDY."
"Huh?"
"TDY. Temporary Duty. Tanduay Rum. TDY. Best puck in all Town. You look in billfold."
I did, expecting all my money to be gone. All but ten pesos of it was and there was a folded note. "Dear Fucking Newguy: Sleeping in the streets, bars, or latrines of Town is expressly forbidden by CABR 117-32. There was a party at the apartment, so you couldn't sleep there. I took your money. The room is paid for. The Alka-Seltzer is for your stomach and head – TDY for your soul. When you're ready she'll show you the way to the apartment. Good Morning."
I looked up. TDY was standing next to the bed, holding the foil package like a gift in front of her hairless crotch. Her smile had a what-the-hell reflection in her eyes, and her body was young and slim; but she wasn't attractive, or even pretty or cute. I wondered if Morning was playing a joke. Me, sleep with that obviously disease-infested child. Why her feet were even dirty. And she had no clothing that I could see except for a soiled, limp blue dress hanging on the doorknob like a dishcloth. No shoes either.