“Not only Bermudas — pajamas. Do you know how much I hated pajamas by the time it was over? I like pajamas, I always did. Who wants to lie with his great red balls over the place, with his cock drifting like a weather vane or the needle on a compass? No, I’m a pajama guy. In motels, hotels, I love a pair of pajamas. But they have to be starched, they have to be fresh. I like a crease in them like the morning paper. But when my wife was living I wore them for a week, a guy who never slept in the same pajamas two nights running, soiled as handkerchiefs and smelly as socks.
“I don’t know, a year is supposed to have four seasons. I only recall the heat waves, being uncomfortable, doing stuff I never wanted to do, that she never wanted to do. Nobody could want to do that crap. People need to be comfortable, but you get two people together and all of a sudden there’s got to be plans, activities, you bust your ass figuring new ways to get stuck in the traffic. Her leukemia went my bail. Now I jerk off or go to the whores, specialists like the one man in Boston who can do this terrific operation. Or I give myself a treat and get one of those pricey call girls from the university. The ordinary is out forever.
“I see guys like me in restaurants — like the two of us here — old goats with tall blond bimbos with bangs on their foreheads like a cornice and terrific tans. You wonder, father and daughter? Uncle and niece? Never. They’re guys from out of town with the nerve actually to ask bellboys where the action is. Why am I telling you all this?”
“Why are you telling me all this? What makes you think I’m interested in your life?”
“You’re not? Don’t you want to know how people live? What’s the matter with you? What are you, twenty-five years old? How much can a kid like you have seen? You got a fever too? Did Mr. Hunsicker shove wadded newspaper up your ass and spritz it with charcoal lighter? All right, we’ll skip the love life. This is how I feel on this fine spring day: like I could only recover with drugs the sense of my possibilities. Like I’ve never been to the laundry in my life. You eat like a horse and I’m full. This is the reason I asked you to lunch and turned down your buddy’s bond. To lay this on you. Now you know some of how I feel. It isn’t privileged information; a lot know this much about me. There’s more, but I’ll spare you. Say, you got any pictures of yourself? You’re a beautiful girl. I’d like to have your snapshot. I’ll give you four dollars for it.”
“You’re crazy.”
“The hell I am. Crazy people are excited. You think I’m excited? Then I can’t have been making myself clear. Listen, I’ll tell you something. If we had this conversation yesterday I might have made the bond. Maybe not, maybe yes. Something came up. I crossed a scary man today. I was slipshod. My altiloquent style takes too much energy. I’m the best in the business, but I’m seven thousand years old and slowing down. Also I missed an important meeting with my colleagues. They’re planning ways to beat history, natural selection, doing in progress over a suggestion box and London broil in Covington, Kentucky. They think I’m against them. I’m not against them; I’m ahead of them. London broil! Those damn fools. They’re chewing extinction and don’t know it. London broil. A half-hour ride all the way to Kentucky and they eat London broil. And you know why? You want a sign of the fucking times? Because Kentucky fried chicken ain’t been on the menu for years!”
He took out his wallet, put seven dollars on the plate beside the bill and stood up. “What sign are you? Do they still ask that? What sign are you?”
“Me? Sagittarius.”
“Sagittarius, yeah?”
“What sign are you?”
“Pliocene.”
The Phoenician put the girl in a taxi. He had the beginning of a hard-on.
Stepping out of the bright cool sunshine, Alexander Main opens the door to his office, jiggling the gay sleigh bells above his door. “Get to work, Mr. Crainpool,” he calls out absently to the arm-gartered man. “Get to work, you idle scoundrel. While the cat’s away, is it? If you’ve finished what you were doing, find something else. We don’t pay out our good money…’ello, ’ello,” he says in his inspector’s voice. The mug from Chicago is sitting at his desk. “Who’s been sitting in my chair?” the Phoenician asks dully.
“Where’s Morgan? What did you tell him?”
“Listen, type, you owe me money. The bail came to something under the five thousand you mentioned.”
“Where is he?”
“You want to know where he is?”
“That’s right.”
“He got away from you?”
“You told him I was outside.”
“Let me understand. He got away from you and we’re back at square one?”
“Yeah, right.”
“Then I’m still on the payroll?”
“Where is he?”
“I’m still on the payroll?”
“You know where he is?”
“Yes?”
“If you can produce him.”
“Let’s see. The bond came to fifty bucks. Thirty percent for fingering him is another fifteen. That makes it sixty-five dollars I’m owed.”
The gangster takes out his wallet and lays two twenties, two tens and a five down on his blotter.
“Very well.” He takes the bond agreement from his pocket and shows it to him. “Yes. Municipal court. Room nine. His appearance is in three weeks.”
“You’re something else, brother.” He shoves one of the tens back in his pocket.
“Welsher!” Main shouts. “Do you see, Crainpool, how this soldier contrives to worm out of our agreement? Indian giver!”
“Oh, you’re really something else,” he says. “You’re just lucky I’m a professional and that no one’s paying me to do you. I don’t play benefits. But I’m going to have long talks with my superiors about you. Oh, yes, I’m going to make detailed reports about you, Mister.” His tone changes and he looks at Alexander with something like surprise. “Fifty bucks? His bond was only fifty bucks? Shit, don’t they know anything in this burg?”
“A backwater.”
“Okay, bad information. We got this call he was busted and they sent me down.”
“What the hell, a day in the country for you.”
“Sure, right.”
“An outing, a little fresh air. Come back and see us now you know the way.”
“Right,” he says. “In three weeks.”
He goes out.
“Well, Mr. Crainpool, was that exciting enough for you?”
“I’ve seen better.”
“Yes. And you’ll see better yet.”
“Will I?”
“Twenty-twenty, sir, close calls and closest. Now then, what have you got for me?”
Crainpool points to a calendar. “Tomorrow’s the first.”
“Yes. I’ll call on Avila, I think.”
“You’re always the one who gets to go out,” he whines.