“What? What? Are you drunk?”
“No. Listen. Just stop talking a minute and listen. When I saw her out at the airport to-day they were all fixed up for the night like I tried to tell you, but you said it was not news; yair, like you said, whether a man sleeps or not or why he can’t sleep ain’t news but only what he does while he ain’t asleep, provided of course that what he does is what the guys that are ordained to pick and choose it consider news.
Yair, I tried to tell you, but I’m just a poor bastard of an ambulance chaser: I ain’t supposed to know news when I see it at thirty-five bucks a week or I’d be getting more…. Where was I? O yair — Had a room for to-night because they have been here since Wednesday and so they must have had somewhere that they could lock the door and take off some of their clothes or at least put the trench-coat down and lay down themselves, because they had shaved somewhere: Jiggs has got a slash on his jaw that even at a barber college you don’t get one like it.
So they were all fixed up, only I never asked them what hotel, because I knew it would not have a name, just a sign on the gallery post that the old man made on Saturday when his sciatica felt good enough for him to go down town only she wouldn’t let him leave until he made the sign and nailed it up: and so what was the use in me having to say, ‘What street did you say? Where is that?’ because I ain’t a racing pilot, I am a reporter ha ha ha and so I would not know where these places are.
Yair, all fixed up, and so he come in on the money this afternoon and I was standing there holding the kid and she says, ‘There,’ just like that: ‘There.’ And then I know that she has not moved during the whole six and a half minutes or maybe six and forty-nine-fifty-two ten thousandths or whatever the time was; she just says ‘There,’ like that, and so it was O.K. even when he come in from the field with the ship and we couldn’t find Jiggs to help roll the ship into the hangar, and he just says, ‘Chasing a skirt, I guess,’ and we put the ship away and he went to the office to get his one-O-seven-fifty and we stayed there waiting for the parachute guy to come down, and he did and wiped the flour out of his eyes and says, ‘Where’s Jiggs?’
‘Why?’ she says. ‘Why?’ he says. ‘He went to collect my money,’ and she says, ‘My God—’”
“Listen! Listen to me!” the editor cried. “Listen!”
“Yair, the mechanic. In a pair of britches that must have zippers so he can take them off at night like you would peel two bananas, and the tops of a pair of boots riveted under the insteps of a pair of tennis shoes.
He collected the parachute guy’s twenty-five bucks for him while the parachute guy was still on the way back from work because the parachute guy gets twenty-five berries for the few seconds it takes except for the five bucks he has to pay the transport pilot to take him to the office you might say, and the eight cents a pound for the flour only to-day the flour was already paid for and so the whole twenty bucks was velvet.
And Jiggs collected it and beat it because they owed him some jack and he thought that since Shumann had won the race that he would win the actual money too like the programme said and not only be able to pay last night’s bill at the whore house where they—”
“Will you listen to me? Will you? Will you?”
“Yair; sure. I’m listening. So I come on to Grandlieu Street thinking about how you had told me to go home and wr — go home, and wondering how in hell you expected me to get across Grandlieu between then and midnight, and all of a sudden I hear this excitement and cursing and it is Jiggs where some guy has stepped on his foot and put a scratch on one of them new boots, only I don’t get it then.
He just tells me he saw her and Shumann going into the Terrebonne because that was all he knew himself; I don’t reckon he stayed to hear much when he beat it back to town with the parachute guy’s jack and bought the boots and then walked in them to where they had just got in from the field and Shumann had tried to collect his one-O- seven-fifty but they wouldn’t pay him.
So I couldn’t cross Grandlieu and so we walked on to the Terrebonne even though this is the last place in town a reporter’s got any business being half-past ten at night, what with all the air meet getting drunk here, and half of Mardi Gras already — but never mind; I already told you that. So we come on over and Jiggs won’t come in and still I don’t get it, even though I had noticed the boots.
So I come in and there she is, standing by this greaser chamber pot and the lobby full of drunk guys with ribbon badges and these kind of coats that look like they need a shave bad, and the guys all congratulating one another about how the airport cost a million dollars and how maybe in the three days more they could find out how to spend another million and make it balance. And he come up, Shumann come up, and her stiller than the pot even and looking at him, and he says they don’t pay off until Saturday and she says, ‘Did you try? Did you try?’
Yair, trying to collect an instalment on the hundred and seven bucks so they can go to bed, with the kid already asleep on the sofa in the madam’s room and the parachute guy waiting with him if he happened to wake up.
And so they walked up to the hotel from Amboise Street because it ain’t far, they are both inside the city limits, to collect something on the money he was under the delusion he had won and I said ‘Amboise Street?’ because in the afternoon she just said they had a room down in French town and she said ‘Amboise Street’ looking at me without batting an eye, and if you don’t know what kind of bedding houses they have on Amboise Street your son or somebody ought to tell you: yair, you rent the bed and the two towels and furnish your own cover.
So they went to Amboise Street and got a room; they always do that because in the Amboise Streets you can sleep to-night and pay to-morrow because a whore will leave a kid sleep on credit.
Only they hadn’t paid for last night yet and so to-night they don’t want to take up the bed again for nothing, what with the air meet in town, let alone the natural course of Mardi Gras. So they left the kid asleep on the madam’s sofa and they come on to the hotel and Shumann said they don’t pay off until Saturday and I said ‘Never mind; I got Jiggs outside’ and they never even looked at me.
Because I hadn’t got it then, that Jiggs had spent the money, you see: and so we went out to the taxi and Jiggs was still standing there against the wall and Shumann looked at him and says ‘You can come on too.
If I could eat them I would have done it at dinner time’ and Jiggs comes and gets in too, kind of sidling over and then ducking into the cab like it was a hen house and hunkering down on the little seat with his feet under him and I still don’t get it even yet, not even when Shumann says to him ‘You better find a manhole to stand in until Jack gets into the cab.’
So we got in and Shumann says ‘We can walk’ and I says ‘Where? Out to Lanier Avenue to get across Grandlieu?’ and so that was the first dollar-eighty and we eased up as soon as the door got unclogged a little; yair, they were having a rush; and we went in and there the kid was, awake now and eating a sandwich the madam had sent out for, and the madam and a little young whore and the whore’s fat guy in his shirt sleeves and his galluses down, playing with the kid and the fat guy wanting to buy the kid a beer and the kid setting there and telling them how his old man flew the best pylon in America and Jiggs hanging back in the hall and jerking at my elbow until I could hear what he was whispering: ‘Say, listen.
Find my bag and open it and you
