She kept remembering the sound of his voice on the answering machine this morning... "Pinocchio Productions. I'm out at the moment"...triggering other memories further in the past...
Like the time she’d asked him why his answering machine always started off with' 'Pinocchio Productions" when there was no such company. Sure there is, he’d said, jumping up and spinning around. Look: no strings. She hadn't understood all the implications at the time.
And then to learn that among the "neat stuff" he’d been picking up in secondhand stores was a whole collection of Vernon Grant art. She found out about that the day he gave Vicky a copy of Flibbity Gibbit. Gia had become familiar with Grant's commercial work during her art school days—he was the creator of Kellogg's Snap, Crackle, and Pop—and she swiped from him now and again when an assignment called for something elfin. She felt she’d found a truly kindred spirit upon discovering that Jack was a fan of Vernon Grant. And Vicky...Vicky treasured Flibbity Gibbit and for a while her favorite expression had been "Wowie-kee-flowie!"
She straightened herself in her chair. Out, damned Jack! Out, I say! She had to start answering Carl in something more than monosyllables.
She told him her idea about changing the thrust of the Burger-Meister place mats from services to desserts. He was effusive in his praise, saying she should be a copywriter as well as an artist. That launched him onto the subject of the new campaign for his biggest client, Wee Folk Children's Clothes. There was work in it for Gia and perhaps even a modeling gig for Vicky.
Poor Carl...he’d tried so hard to hit it off with Vicky tonight. As usual, he failed miserably. Some people never learn how to talk to kids. They turn up the volume and enunciate with extra care, as if talking to a partially deaf immigrant. They sound as if they're reading lines somebody else wrote for them, or as if what they're saying is really for the benefit of other adults listening and not just for the child. Kids sense that and turn off.
But Vicky hadn't been turned off this afternoon. Jack knew how to talk to her. When he spoke it was to Vicky and to no one else. There was instant rapport between those two. Perhaps because there was a lot of little boy in Jack, a part of him that had never grown up. But if Jack was a little boy, he was a dangerous little boy. He—
Why did he keep creeping back into her thoughts? Jack is the past. Carl is the future. Concentrate on Carl!
She drained her wine and stared at Carl. Good old Carl. Gia held her glass out for more wine. She wanted lots of wine tonight.
18
His eye was killing him. He sat hunched in the dark recess of the doorway, glowering at the street. He'd probably have to spend the whole night here unless something came along soon.
The waiting was the worst part, man. The waiting and the hiding. Word was probably out to be on the lookout for a guy with a scratched eye. Which meant he couldn't hit the street and go looking, and he hadn't been in town long enough to find no one to crash with. So he had to sit here and wait for something to come to him.
All 'cause of that rotten bitch.
He fingered the gauze patch taped over his left eye and winced at the shock of pain from even the gentlest touch. Bitch! Damn near gouged his eye out last night. But he showed her. Fucking-ay right. Bounced her around good after that. And later on, in this very same doorway, when he'd gone through her wallet and found a grand total of seventeen bucks, and seen that the necklace was nothing but junk, he'd wanted to go back and do a tap dance on her head, but figured someone would've found her by then.
And then to top it all off, he'd had to spend most of the take on eye patches and ointment. He was worse off now than when he'd rolled the bitch.
He hoped she was hurting...hurting real good. He knew he was.
Should never have come east, man. He'd had to geese Detroit after losing it with a pry bar on that guy changing a tire out by the interstate. Easier to get lost here than someplace like, say, Saginaw. Bad part was he didn't know nobody.
He leaned back and watched the street with his good eye. Some weird-looking old lady was hobbling by on shoes that looked too small for her, pulling a shopping basket behind her. Not much there. Ain't worth the trouble of a closer look.
19
Who am I kidding? Jack thought. He’d been trudging up and down every West Side Street in the area. His back was killing him from walking hunched over. If the mugger had stayed in the neighborhood, Jack would have passed him by now.
Damn the heat and damn the dress and most of all damn the goddamn wig. I'll never find this guy.
But it wasn't only the futility of tonight's quest that was getting to him. The afternoon had hit him hard.
Jack prided himself on being a man of few illusions. He believed in the a balance of life and based that belief on Jack's Law of Social Dynamics: For every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction. The reaction wasn't necessarily automatic or inevitable; life wasn't like thermodynamics. Sometimes the reaction had to be helped along. That was where Jack came into the picture. He was in the business of making some of those reactions happen. He liked to think of himself as a sort of catalyst.
Jack knew he was a violent man. H~ made no excuses for that. He’d come to terms with it. He’d hoped Gia could eventually come to understand it.
When Gia had left him he'd convinced himself that it was all a big misunderstanding, that all he needed was a chance to talk to her and everything would be straightened out, that it was just her Italian pigheadedness keeping them apart. Well, he’d had his chance this afternoon and it was obvious there was no hope of a common ground with Gia. She wanted no part of him.
He frightened her.
That was the hardest part to accept. He had scared her off. Not by wronging her or betraying her, but simply by letting her know the truth...by letting her know what Repairman Jack fixed, and how he went about his work, and what tools he used.
One of them was wrong. Until this afternoon it had been easy to believe that it was Gia. Not so easy tonight. He believed in Gia, believed in her sensitivity, her perceptiveness. And she found him repugnant.
A soul-numbing lethargy seeped through him.
What if she's right? What if I am nothing more than a high-priced hoodlum who's rationalized his way into believing he's one of the good guys?
Jack shook himself. Self-doubt was a stranger to him. He wasn't sure how to fight back. And he had to fight it. He wouldn't change the way he lived; doubted he could if he wished to. He’d spent too long on the outside to find his way back in again—
Something about the guy sitting in the doorway he just passed...something about that face in the shadows that his unconscious had spotted in passing but had not yet sent up to his forebrain. Something...
Jack let go of the shopping basket handle. It clattered to the sidewalk. As he bent to pick it up, he glanced back at the doorway.
The guy was young with short blond hair—and had a white gauze patch over his left eye. Jack felt his heart notch up its tempo. This was almost too good to be true. Yet there he was, keeping back in the shadows, undoubtedly aware that his patch marked him. It had to be him. If not, it was one hell of a coincidence. Jack needed to be sure.
He picked up the cart and stood still for a moment, deciding his next move. Patch had noticed him, but seemed indifferent. Jack would have to change that.
With a cry of delight, he bent and pretended to pick something out from under the wheel of the cart. As he straightened, he turned his back to the street—but remained in full view of Patch whom he pretended not to see—and dug inside the top of his dress. He removed the roll of bills, made sure Patch got a good look at its thickness, then pretended to wrap a new bill around it. He stuffed it back in his ersatz bra, and continued on his way.