I found my mind returning to the Demmicks, who for the first time in recorded history hadn't played any of their big-band records at full volume before retiring, and to Buster, who for the first time in recorded history hadn't greeted the sound of George's latchkey turning in the lock with a fusillade of barks. The thought that something was off-kilter returned, and it was stronger this time.
Meanwhile, Peoria was looking at me with an expression I'd never expected to see on his honest, open face: sulky irritation mixed with exasperated humor. It was the way a kid looks at a windbag uncle who's told all his stories, even the boring ones, three or four times.
“Ain't you picking up on this newsflash, Mr. Umney? We're rich! My mom ain't going to have to press shirts for that damned old Lee Ho anymore, and I ain't going to have to sell papers on the corner anymore, shiverin when it rains in the winter and havin to suck up to those nutty old bags who work down at Bilder's. I can quit actin like I died and went to heaven every time some blowhard leaves me a nickel tip.”
I started a little at that, but what the hell – I wasn't a nickel man. I left Peoria seven cents, day in and day out. Unless I was too broke to afford it, of course, but in my business an occasional stony stretch comes with the territory.
“Maybe we ought to go up to Blondie's and have a cup of java,” I said. “Talk this thing over.”
“Can't. It's closed.”
“Blondie's? The hell you say!”
But Peoria couldn't be bothered with such mundane stuff as the coffee shop up the street. “You ain't heard the best, Mr. Umney! My Uncle Fred knows a doctor up in Frisco – a specialist – who thinks he can do something about my eyes.” He turned his face up to mine. Below the cheaters and his too-thin nose, his lips were trembling. “He says it might not be the optic nerves after all, and if it's not, there's an operation... I don't understand all the technical stuff, but I could see again, Mr. Umney!” He reached out for me blindly... well, of course he did. How else could he reach out? “I could see again!”
He clutched at me, and I gripped his hands and squeezed them briefly before pushing them gently away. There was ink on his fingers, and I'd been feeling so good when I got up that I'd put on my new chalk worsted. Hot for summer, of course, but the whole city is airconditioned these days, and besides, I was feeling naturally cool. I didn't feel so cool now. Peoria was looking up at me, his thin and somehow perfect newsboy's face troubled. A little breeze – scented with oleander and exhaust – ruffled his cowlick, and I realized that I could see it because he wasn't wearing his tweed cap. He looked somehow naked without it, and why not? Every newsboy should wear a tweed cap, just like every shoeshine boy should wear a beanie cocked way back on his head.
“What's the matter, Mr. Umney? I thought you'd be happy. Jeepers, I didn't have to come out here to this lousy corner today, you know, but I did – I even got here early, because I kinda had an idea you'd get here early. I thought you'd be happy, my mom hittin the lottery and me gettin a chance at an operation, but you ain't.” Now his voice trembled with resentment. “You ain't!”
“Yes I am,” I said, and I wanted to be happy – part of me did, anyway – but the bitch of it was that he was mostly right. Because it meant things would change, you see, and things weren't supposed to change. Peoria Smith was supposed to be right here, year in and year out, with that perfect cap of his tilted back on hot days and pulled down low on rainy ones, so that the raindrops dripped off the bill. He was always supposed to be smiling, was never supposed to say “hell” or “frogging,” and most of all, he was supposed to be blind.
“You ain't!” he said, and then, shockingly, he pushed his cardtable over. It fell into the street, papers flapping everywhere. His white cane rolled into the gutter. Peoria heard it go and bent down to get it. I could see tears coming out from beneath his dark glasses and go rolling down his pale, thin cheeks. He started groping for the cane, but it had fallen near me and he was going the wrong way. I felt a sudden strong urge to haul off and kick him in his blind newsboy's ass.
Instead, I bent over, got his stick, and tapped him lightly on the hip with it.
Peoria turned, quick as a snake, and snatched it. Out of the corner of my eye I could see pictures of Hitler and the recently deceased Cuban bandleader flapping all over Sunset Boulevard – a bus bound for Van Ness snored through a little drift of them, leaving a bitter tang of diesel fumes behind. I hated the way those newspapers looked, fluttering here and there. They looked messy. Worse, they looked wrong. Utterly and completely wrong. I fought another urge, as strong as the first one, to grab Peoria and shake him. To tell him he was going to spend the morning picking up those newspapers, and I wasn't going to let him go home until he'd gotten every last one.
It occurred to me that less than ten minutes ago, I'd been thinking that this was the perfect L. A. morning – so perfect it deserved a trademark symbol. And it had been, dammit. So where had things gone wrong? And how had it happened so fast?
No answers came, only an irrational but powerful voice from inside, telling me that the kid's mother couldn't have won the lottery, that the kid couldn't stop selling newspapers, and that, most of all, the kid couldn't see. Peoria Smith was supposed to be blind for the rest of his life.
Well, it's got to be something experimental, I thought. Even if the doctor up in Frisco isn't a quack, and he probably is, the operation's bound to fail.
And, bizarre as it sounds, the thought calmed me down.
“Listen,” I said, “we got off on the wrong foot this morning, that's all. Let me make it up to you. We'll go down to Blondie's and I'll buy you breakfast. What do you say, Peoria? You can dig into a plate of bacon and eggs and tell me all ab…”
“Fuck you!” he shouted, shocking me all the way down to my shoes. “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, you cheap gumshoe! You think blind people can't tell when people like you are lying through their teeth? Fuck you! And keep your hands off me from now on! I think you're a faggot!”
That did it – no one calls me a faggot and gets away with it, not even a blind newsboy. I forgot all about how Peoria had saved my life during that Mavis Weld business; I reached for his cane, meaning to take it away from him and whack him across the keister with it a few times. Teach him some manners.
Before I could get it, though, he hauled off and slammed the cane's tip into my lower belly – and I do mean lower. I doubled up in agony, but even while I was trying to keep from howling with pain, I was counting my blessings; two inches lower still and I could have quit peeping for a living and gotten a job singing soprano in the Palace of the Doges.
I made a quick, reflexive grab for him anyway, and he brought the cane down on the back of my neck. Hard. It didn't break, but I heard it crack. I figured I could finish the job when I caught him and ran it into his right ear. I'd show him who was a faggot.
He backed away from me as if he'd caught my brainwave, and threw the cane into the street.
“Peoria,” I managed. Maybe it still wasn't too late to catch sanity by the shirttail. “Peoria, what the hell's wrong with…”
“And don't call me that!” he screamed. “My name's Francis! Frank! You're the one who started calling me Peoria! You started it and now everyone calls me that and I hate it!”