The conversation with Sharon lagged; it was obvious that something was wrong with his Schuyler facet, at least so far as she was concerned, though he was unable to see where the trouble lay. After a few more minutes of disjointed chatter, she excused herself and left the bar. He watched her go. She had eluded him neatly. Where to next?
He thought he knew.
The East End bar was far downtown and not very reputable. Gaius Titus pushed through the revolving door and headed for the counter.
“Hi, Sam. Howsa boy?” the bartended said.
“Let’s have a beer, Jerry.” The bartender shoved a beer out toward the short, swarthy man in the leather jacket.
“Things all right?”
“Can’t complain, Jerry. How’s business?” Sam Spielman asked, as he lifted the beer to his mouth.
“It’s lousy.”
“It figures,” Sam said. “Why don’t you put in automatics? They’re getting all the business now.”
“Sure, Sam, sure. And where do I get the dough? That’s twenty.” He took the coins Sam dropped on the bar and grinned. “At least you can afford beer.”
“You know me, Jerry,” Sam said. “My credit’s good.”
Jerry nodded. “Good enough.” He punched the coins into the register. “Ginger was looking for you, by the way. What you got against the gal?”
“Against her? Nothin’. What do y’mean?” Sam pushed out his beer shell for a refill.
“She’s got a hooker out for you—you know that, don’t you?” Jerry was grinning.
Gaius Titus thought: She’s not very bright, but she might very well serve my purpose. She has other characteristics worth transmitting.
“Hi, Sammy.”
He turned to look at her. “Hi, Ginger,” he said. “How’s the gal?”
“Not bad, honey.” But she didn’t look it. She looked as though she’d been dragged through the mill. Her blonde hair was disarranged, her blouse was wrinkled, and, as usual, her teeth were discolored by the lipstick that had rubbed off on them.
“I love you, Sammy,” she said softly.
“I love you, too,” Sam said. He meant it.
Gaius Titus thought sourly: But how many of her characteristics would I not want to transmit? Still, she’ll do, I guess. She’s a solid girl.
“Sam,” she said, interrupting the flow of his thoughts, “why don’t you come around more often? I miss you.”
“Look, Ginger baby,” Sam said. “Remember, I’ve got a long haul to pull. If I marry you, you gotta understand that I don’t get home often. I gotta drive a truck. You might not see me more than once or twice a week.”
Titus rubbed his forehead. He wasn’t quite sure, after all, that the girl was worthwhile. She had spunk, all right, but was she worthy of fostering a race of immortals?
He didn’t get a chance to find out. “Married?” The blonde’s voice sounded incredulous. “Who the devil wants to get married? You’ve got me on the wrong track, Sam. I don’t want to get myself tied down.”
“Sure, honey, sure,” he said. “But I thought—”
Ginger stood up. “You think anything you please, Sam. Anything you please. But not marriage.”
She stared at him hard for a moment, and walked off. Sam looked after her morosely.
Gaius Titus grinned behind the Sam Spielman mask. She wasn’t the girl either. Two thousand years of life had taught him that women were unpredictable, and he wasn’t altogether surprised at her reaction to his proposal.
But he was disturbed over this second failure of the evening nevertheless. Was his judgment that far off? Perhaps, he thought, he was losing the vital ability of personality-projection. He didn’t like that idea.
For hours, Gaius Titus walked the streets of New York.
New York. Sure it was new. So was Old York, in England. Menenius had seen both of them grow from tiny villages to towns to cities to metropoli.
Metropoli. That was Greek. It had taken him twelve years to learn Greek. He hadn’t rushed it.
Twelve years. And he still wasn’t an adult. He could remember when the Emperor had seen the sign in the sky: In hoc signo vinces. And, at the age of four hundred and sixty-two, he’d still been too young to enter the service of the Empire.
Gaius Titus Menenius, Citizen of Rome. When he had been a child, he had thought Rome would last forever. But it hadn’t; Rome had fallen. Egypt, which he had long thought of as an empire which would last forever, had gone even more quickly. It had died and putrefied and sloughed off into the Great River which carries all life off into death.
Over the years and the centuries, races and peoples and nations had come and gone. And their passing had had no effect at all on Gaius Titus.
He was walking north. He turned left on Market Street, away from the Manhattan Bridge. Suddenly, he was tired of walking. He hailed a passing taxi.
He gave the cabby his address on Park Avenue and leaned back against the cushions to relax.
The first few centuries had been hard. He hadn’t grown up, in the first place. By the time he was twenty, he had attained his full height—five feet nine. But he still looked like a seventeen-year-old.
And he had still looked that way nineteen hundred years later. It had been a long, hard drive to make enough money to live on during that time. Kids don’t get well-paying jobs.
Actually, he’d lived a miserable hands-to-mouth existence for centuries. But the gradual collapse of the Christian ban on usury had opened the way for him to make some real money. Money makes more money, in a capitalistic system, if you have patience. Titus had time on his side.
It wasn’t until the free-enterprise system had evolved that he started to get anywhere. But a deposit of several hundred pounds in the proper firm back in 1735 had netted a little extra money. The British East India Company had brought his financial standing up a great deal, and judicious investments ever since left him comfortably fixed. He derived considerable amusement from the extraordinary effects compound interest exerted on a bank account a century old.
“Here you are, buddy,” said the cabdriver.
Gaius Titus climbed out and gave the driver a five note without asking for change.
Zeus, he thought. I might as well make a night of it.
He hadn’t been really drunk since the stock market collapse back in 1929.
Leslie MacGregor pushed open the door of the San Marino Bar in Greenwich Village and walked to the customary table in the back corner. Three people were already there, and the conversation was going well. Leslie waved a hand and the two men waved back. The girl grinned and beckoned.
“Come on over, Les,” she yelled across the noisy room. “Mack has just sold a story!” Her deep voice was clear and firm.
Mack, the heavy-set man next to the wall, grinned self-consciously and picked up his beer.
Leslie strolled quietly over to the booth and sat down beside Corwyn, the odd man of the trio.
“Sold a story?” Leslie repeated archly.
Mack nodded. “Chimerical Review,” he said. “A little thing I called ‘Pluck Up the Torch.’ Not much, but it’s a sale; you know.”
“If one wants to prostitute one’s art,” said Corwyn.
Leslie frowned at him. “Don’t be snide. After all, Mack has to pay his rent.” Then he turned toward the girl. “Lorraine, could I talk to you a moment?”
She brushed the blonde hair back from the shoulders of her black turtleneck sweater and widened the grin on her face.
“Sure, Les,” she said in her oddly deep, almost masculine voice. “What’s all the big secret?”