So I didn’t quit the team, and we made a trip out of town for a game the next night, which was Saturday, and we won the game, and I made twenty-six points. We rode on a bus that the school chartered, and we got back to town after midnight, and the next afternoon I went uptown to Beegie’s and shot rotation, which was the first time I’d done it for a long time. When I got back home, the old lady was having a can of beer at the kitchen table, and she said, “Someone called you on the telephone,” and I said, “Who the hell you mean, someone?”
“A girl,” she said, and I said, “What girl?”
“How would I know what girl?” she said.
“God damn it to hell, didn’t you even ask who she was?” I said.
“Why the hell should I ask her who she was?” she said. “She didn’t want to talk to me.”
“What the hell makes you so God-damn ignorant?” I said. “Anyone knows you’re supposed to ask anyone’s name when they call on the damn telephone.”
Then she began to blubber and say that I wouldn’t talk to my old mother that way if only Eddie was here, and I said that was a lot of bull and she knew it, and even if Eddie hadn’t got killed in the war he probably wouldn’t be around, anyhow, because he’d probably be in jail, and that tore it for sure, and she began to bawl and howl about what a terrible sin it was for me to talk that way about my poor dead brother, so I got the hell out of there. I walked up the street a few blocks to a crummy neighborhood drug store and screwed up my courage and called Marsha, and sure enough, it had been her on the phone, just like I’d suspected.
She said, “Is that you, Skimmer?” and I said it was, and she said, “I just called you this afternoon.”
I said, “I thought maybe it was you. That’s why I called back,” and she said, “Did you miss me around school?” and I said, “Well, I sort of looked around for you, but you didn’t seem to be there,” and then she let out this little squeal and asked me if Tizzy hadn’t told me what she’d told him to tell me, and I said he’d forgot all about it until Friday, and she said, “Oh, that damn Tizzy! I’ll fix him!” and I thought, I hope she fixes you good, you son of a bitch.
“Well,” she said, “I’ve simply had a deadly time all week. You know how it is when you have to go somewhere with your mother.”
I said sure, I knew, but I didn’t, as a matter of fact, because my old lady never went anywhere, and even if she’d run all over the God-damn place, she wouldn’t have taken me with her. Anyhow, Marsha kept going on about how deadly it had been, and how she simply had to have something interesting and exciting to do or she’d go right out of her mind, and after a while it turned out that what she wanted with me was, she could have her old man’s car for a couple of hours and would I like to take a ride? I said I didn’t mind, which was the God-damnedest understatement of the year, and she said she’d drive by and pick me up if I’d give her my address, and I said it just happened I was calling from a drug store and she could pick me up there, and I gave her the address of the drug store and hung up.
I had fifteen lousy cents in my pocket, and I wondered what the hell I’d do if Marsha wanted to stop somewhere for a coke or something, and I was thinking that maybe I could get away with that old dodge of putting your hand in your pocket and feeling around and saying, “Well, Jesus Christ, what could’ve happened to the money I had? Do you suppose I could’ve left it in my other pants?” but just then who do you think I saw but old Bugs dropping a nickel in a pin ball machine at the end of the soda fountain. There was an outside chance that Bugs might have some dough, even if it was a damn slim one, so I went up to him and said, “Hi, Bugs, old boy. You happen to have an extra buck on you?” and to tell the truth, I never had any God-damn idea he had anything like that much, if any at all except the nickel he’d just dropped in the machine, but I could tell right away by the sneaky look that got on his face that he really had it.
“Hi, Skimmer,” he said. “Where the hell would I get that kind of dough?”
“Same place you always get it,” I said. “Out of your grandmother’s purse.”
It was a pretty good shot, and it was plain enough from the way old Bugs got all red in the face that I’d hit it right on the nose. Old Bugs had this grandmother who was about a million years old and got a pension from the government because Bugs’s grandfather had been in some God-damn war back in the Middle Ages or sometime. Every month after she got her pension, she’d put part of it in the bank and put the rest of it in this little black purse she carried around with her. The way she carried the purse, she’d wrap it in a handkerchief and pin it to her long underwear under about six inches of other underclothes and stuff, and the only way Bugs could get to it was to wait until she’d undressed and gone to bed. She kept pieces of hoarhound candy in the purse with the money, and you could always tell when old Bugs had swiped some money from his grandmother because it always smelled like this God-damn hoarhound.
Well, he swore up and down that he didn’t have any, but I knew he was a damn liar and just didn’t want to come across for a buddy, so I said, “Look, Bugs, don’t give me any crap now, because I’ve got to have some lousy dough, and I’ll tell you why. I got this date with Marsha Davis, and I’m stony, and she’s going to be here any minute to pick me up in her old man’s car.”
He looked at me and said, “Oh, bull, you haven’t any more got a date with Marsha Davis than I have,” and I said, “The hell I haven’t. You just stand up inside the window and see if she doesn’t pick me up, and if you’ll let me have a buck I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll try to fix you up with one of Marsha’s friends.”
That was a God-damn laugh, because no classy doll was going to have any time for old Bugs, even if he’d played on a dozen lousy basketball teams, and besides he was only a stinking substitute who hardly ever got to play in a real game, but it worked just the same, Bugs being pretty God-damn stupid when you got right down to it, and he said, “No bull, Skimmer? You really think you could fix me up?”
I said sure, it was a cinch, and he forked over a buck, and sure enough, it smelled just like this stinking hoarhound. I took the money and started for the door, and Bugs followed me up past the soda fountain saying, “Don’t forget now, Skimmer. You promised to fix me up,” and I said, “Sure, sure, I’ll fix it, Bugs,” even though I didn’t really have any idea of doing any such damn thing, and I went on outside and stood by the curb and waited. It was quite a while before she got there, and I began to think how maybe she wasn’t coming after all, and how old Bugs would hoot if she didn’t, and how I’d knock his God-damn teeth out if he did, and that’s for damn sure the trouble with having a classy doll like Marsha on the string, she always keeps your lousy guts in an uproar. Pretty soon she came, though, in this black Buick about a mile long. She pulled up to the curb and said, “Hop in, Skimmer,” and I hopped in beside her and looked back through the window of the drug store, and there was old Bugs with his teeth hanging out, and I could see that he was just about to wet his drawers, he was so God-damn jealous.