After dinner he felt kind of tired. He stretched out on the couch and took a nap.
When he woke up, the movie was over, and the VCR had switched back over to TV. Facts of Life, a show he couldn’t stand, was just coming on. Tutt watched the first few minutes to see if the girls had grown any more tit since the last time he watched, and then he got up, cracked another beer, and went to the window. He looked down to the darkened street and saw that it had begun to rain.
Saturday night. Tutt could put a nice, fat bankroll in his pocket and go out and blow it if that’s what he wanted. He could go lean against the bar next to a bunch of pretty guys in some club, but someone might ask him to dance, and he couldn’t dance for shit.
Meeting civilians, it wasn’t his thing.
He could ask a girl to a restaurant — he could afford any restaurant he wanted, now — but for what, to sit there and listen to some broad run her cocksucker all night? Very, very exciting. He’d rather stick a couple of pennies in his eyes, roll over, and go to sleep.
Tutt had real money for the first time in his life. But when he thought about it, he realized that the only true pleasure he had was his work.
He sat down next to a small table set by the window and turned on the police scanner he had mounted on a shelf nearby. He adjusted the frequency, sat back, and sipped his beer.
Scott ripped the register tape and handed it to Karras. Karras checked it out. The Georgetown store had rung out with pretty sweet Saturday numbers. Marcus would be happy about that.
Karras said good-bye to Scott and to Mary, the cute British clerk, and walked down Wisconsin. He passed the Georgetown theater, where Caligula had been playing for years. He bumped into a man and kept walking, through the late afternoon shopping crowds that were bleeding into the early evening party crowds of suburban and city kids beginning their night. Karras went into Pied Au Cochon and had a seat at the bar.
He liked this old place, an English professor’s idea of a Parisian café. It had become a ritual to have a drink here on Saturday before his last stop at the Dupont store. Tonight Karras needed the drink. He felt as if his soul was drowning and maybe one drink would lift it back up. He hadn’t had a bump for the past hour, having made the decision to cut himself off before he reached the point where he couldn’t stop. His body couldn’t take one more late night, and he didn’t want to see another empty snow-seal lying crumpled in the Sunday morning trash.
“Hey, Bobby.”
“Dimitri,” said the bartender.
“A Grand Marnier.”
“You got it.”
Karras watched the tender take a pot off a hot plate and pour steaming water into a snifter. He rolled the water around in the glass and dumped the water out into the sink. Then he free-poured Grand Marnier into the heated glass, eyeballing the level carefully.
Karras watched with interest. He loved the rituals involved in getting high.
“Here you go.” Bobby, who looked like a wind-carved laborer in a red vest, set the glass in front of Karras.
Karras tipped the snifter carefully off its base and laid it on its side. The liqueur kissed the very top of the glass but did not spill out by even a drop.
“Perfect, Bobby.”
“I know.”
Karras sipped the warm liqueur. If he were a smoker he would have lit one now, but Karras had never found pleasure in the taste. Back when he and Clay were serious about ball, Karras wouldn’t have even considered smoking, as it would have affected his game. Marcus still played one night a week over at Alice Deal’s gym, with a group of longtime D.C. boys — Ted Tavlarides, Adam Young, Sam Pinczuk, and Bill Valis among them. Karras hadn’t played pickup for years.
“Hey, how you doin’?” said Karras, smiling rakishly at a leggy brunette who was cruising by the bar.
She surveyed him quickly and looked away. Her date, an impeccably groomed young man, said something funny when she arrived at their table, and both of them laughed.
In the bar mirror Karras looked at his wasted form.
“Goddamn you, man,” he said out loud.
“What say?” said Bobby.
“Nothin’.”
Karras thought of Donna, rushing off to Eddie Golden, that dishwasher installer, outside her apartment house earlier in the day. He was jealous, and the jealousy confused him. Okay, he’d been with her, and they’d had fun — why would she be different than any other girl he knew? Of course, he didn’t love Donna, not in any way he recognized. But he didn’t want to lose her so quickly. Or maybe it was just that he didn’t want to lose.
Karras threw back his shot. He left seven on four and got off his stool.
“Later, Bobby.”
Bobby said, “Later than you think.”
You can keep your barroom wisdom, pal, thought Karras, but the tender’s words were swimming in his head as he walked out to the street.
Kevin Murphy placed a bowl of hot vegetable soup on a TV tray and carried it across the room. He put the tray by the bed. Wanda Murphy sat up, gathered her robe around her nightgown, and pushed her feet into an old pair of slippers.
“Hey, baby.”
“Hey, Kev.”
She gave him a smile. Her red lipstick was thick and trailed off in places from her mouth, as if it had been applied by a child. Her hair went off in a couple of odd directions, and sheet lines creased her face.
Even with all that mess, thought Murphy, she’s still a good-lookin’ woman when she smiles. I wonder if she knows.
He said, “You look beautiful, Wanda.”
“Go on.”
“I’m serious.” He lifted the tray so it fit over her legs. “Here’s your dinner.”
“All that?”
Murphy laughed. “You said you weren’t hungry, girl!”
“I know. I’m just playin’, Kevin.”
He sat next to her on the bed while she ate the soup and watched TV. He rested his hand on her thigh, warm through two layers of cloth. His old thirteen-inch Admiral was set up on her dresser, and Wanda would laugh every so often at the jokes on the show, laugh at things that couldn’t even bring Kevin Murphy to smile. She watched the same comedy shows every Saturday night — Gimme a Break, Facts of Life, Golden Girls, and 227, all in a row. Called it her “lineup.” Some real stupid shit, but if it made her happy for a couple of hours, it was all right by him.
“Wanda?”
“What, Kev?”
“Been hanging out with this boy I met, down in Shaw?”
“That right.”
“Uh-huh. Eleven years old. Boy name of Anthony Taylor. Goes by T, but I tell him not to use it. Sounds like one of those street names all the kids got now.”
“That’s nice.”
“He’s a good boy, Wanda. Not much of a home life, though. Lives with his grandmother down there. She’s tryin’ and all that, but a boy needs a mother and a father to make him right.”
“Why are you telling me this, Kevin?” Wanda smiled at something said on the show. She hadn’t once moved her eyes away from the set.
“Just makin’ conversation, baby. Just a story is all it is, tellin’ you about my day.”
“Sounds like you’re sayin’ we ought to take this boy into our home. That what’s on your mind? We’re supposed to bring in a stranger you just now met?”