No sign of Osiecki, however.
I returned to the table and sat down. I was even more thirsty now. A glass of plain tap water would have satisfied me, but I didn’t dare ask. The blue dusk had faded to cinders. I could distinguish objects more clearly now. It was like the end of a dream, where the edges fray out.
What’s he doing? I kept asking myself. Is he trying to talk his way out?
I shuddered to think what would happen to us if that monster in the uniform should take us in tow.
It was a good half hour before Osiecki reappeared. He looked none the worse for the grueling I suspected he had undergone. In fact, he was half smiling, half chuckling.
Let’s go, he said. It’s all settled.
I sprang to my feet. How much? I asked, as we scurried to the cloak room.
Guess!
I can’t.
Almost a hundred, he said.
No!
Wait, he said. Wait till we get outside.
The place looked like a coffin factory now. Only spectres were roaming about. In full sunshine it probably looked worse. I thought of the guys I had seen huddled in the corner. I wondered how they would look—after the treatment.
It was dawning when we stepped outdoors. Nothing in sight except over-stuffed garbage cans. Even the cats had disappeared. We headed swiftly for the nearest subway station.
Now tell me, I said, how in hell did you manage it?
He chuckled. Then he said: It didn’t cost us a penny.
He began explaining what took place in the manager’s office. For a crazy man, I thought to myself, you’re as adroit as a quirt!
Here’s what happened … After he had fished out what cash he had on him—a mere twelve or thirteen dollars—he offered to write a check for the balance. The manager, of course, laughed in his face. He asked Osiecki if he had noticed anything on his way to the office. Osiecki knew damned well what he meant. You mean those guys in the corner? Yeah, they too had offered to pay with rubber checks. He pointed to the watches and rings lying on his desk. Osiecki understood that too. Then, innocent as a lamb, he suggested that they hold the two of us until the banks opened up. A phone call would verify whether his check was good or not. A. grilling followed. Where did he work? At what? How long had he lived in New York? Was he married? Did he have a savings account as well? And so on.
What really turned the tide in his favor, Osiecki thought, was the calling card which he presented to the manager. That and the check book, both of which bore the name of a prominent architect, one of Osiecki’s friends. From then on the pressure weakened. They handed him his check book and Osiecki promptly wrote out a check—including a generous tip for the waiter! Funny, he said, but that little touch—the tip—impressed them. It would have made me suspicious. He grinned, the usual one, plus a little spittle this time. That’s all there was to it.
But what will your friend say when he discovers that you signed his name to a check?
Nothing, was the calm reply. He’s dead. It happened just two days ago.
Naturally, I was going to ask him how he happened to be in possession of his friend’s check book, but then I said to myself—Shit! A guy who’s nuts and cunning at the same time can explain anything. Forget it!
So I said instead: You know your onions, don’t you?
Have to, he replied. In this town, anyway.
Rolling through the tube he leaned over and shouted in my deaf ear—Nice birthday party, wasn’t it? Did you like the champagne? Those guys were simple … anybody could take them.
At Borough Hall, where we rose to the air again, he stood looking at the sky, his face one broad beam of pleasure and contentment. Cockadoodledo! he crowed and then he jingled the coins in his pocket. What about breakfast at Joe’s?
Fine, I said. Bacon and eggs would go good with me.
As we were stepping inside the restaurant—So you think it was pretty clever of me, do you? That was nothing. You should have known me in Montreal. When I ran the whorehouse, I mean.
Suddenly I panicked. Money … who had the money? I wasn’t going through that performance a second time.
What’s eating you? he said. Sure I’ve got money.
I mean cash. Didn’t you tell me you doled out the bills you had in your pocket?
Shucks, he said, they gave ‘em back to me when I signed the check.
I sucked my breath in. Cripes, I said, that beats everything. You’re not clever, you’re a wizard.
Our talk is of nothing but Paris now. Paris will solve all our problems. Meanwhile every one must get busy. Stasia will turn out puppets and death masks; Mona will sell her blood, seeing as mine is worthless.
Meanwhile, busy leeches that we are, new suckers are offering to be bled. One of them is an Indian, a Cherokee. A no good Indian—always drunk and nasty. When drunk, however, he throws his money away … Some one else has promised to pay the rent each month. He left the first installment in an envelope, under the gate, while we were sound asleep a few nights ago. Then there is a Jewish surgeon, also of a mind to help, who is a judo expert. Rather odd for one of his standing, it strikes me. He’s good for a last minute touch. And then there’s the ticket chopper whom they’ve resurrected. All he asks in return for his offerings is an occasional sandwich on which one of them must make a little pipi.
During this new burst of frenzy the walls have been redecorated: the place looks like Madame Tussaud’s now. Nothing but skeletons, death masks, degenerate harlequins, tombstones and Mexican gods—all in lurid colors.
Now and then, whether from excitement or from their frenetic exertions, they get vomiting spells. Or the trots. One thing after another, as in The Ramayana.
Then one day, disgusted with all this senseless activity, a bright idea visited me. Just for the hell of it, I decided I would get in touch with Mona’s brother—not the West Pointer, the other, the younger one. She had always described him as being very sincere, very straight-forward. He didn’t know how to lie, that’s how she put it once.
Yes, why not have a heart to heart talk? A few plain facts, a few cold truths would make a pleasant parenthesis in the steady stream of phantasy and clabberwhorl.
So I call him up. To my astonishment, he is only too eager to come and see me. Says he has long wanted to pay us a visit but Mona would never hear of it. Sounds bright, frank, altogether sympathique over the phone. Boyish like, he tells me that he hopes to be a lawyer soon.
One look at the freak museum we inhabit and he’s aghast. Walks around in a trance, staring at this and that, shaking his head disapprovingly. So this is how you live? he repeats again and again. Her idea, no doubt. God, but she’s a queer one.
I offer him a glass of wine but he informs me that he never touches liquor. Coffee? No, a glass of water would do.
I ask if she had always been this way. For answer he tells me that no one in the family knew much about her. She was always on her own, always secretive, always pretending that things were other than they were. Nothing but lies, lies, lies.
But before she went to college—how was she then?
.College? She never finished High School. She left home when she was sixteen.
I insinuated as tactfully as I could that conditions at home were probably depressing. May be she couldn’t get along with a step-mother, I added.
Step-mother? Did she say she had a step-mother? The bitch!
Yes, I said, she always insists that she couldn’t get along with her step-mother. Her father, on the other hand, she loved dearly. So she says. They were very close.
What else? His lips were compressed with anger.
Oh, a lot of things. For one thing, that her sister hated her. Why she never knew.
Don’t say any more, he said. Stop! It’s the other way round. Exactly the opposite. My mother was as kind as a mother can be. She was her real mother, not her step-mother. As for my father, he used to get so furious with her that he would beat her unmercifully. Chiefly because of her lying … Her sister, you say. Yes, she’s a normal, conventional person, very handsome too. There never was any hate in her. On the contrary, she did everything in her power to make life easier for all of us. But no one could do anything with a bitch like this one. She had to have everything her own way. When she didn’t she threatened to run away.
I don’t understand, said I. I know she’s a born liar, but … Well, to twist things absolutely upside down, why? What can she be trying to prove?
She always considered herself above us, he replied. We were too prosaic, too conventional, for her taste. She was somebody—an actress, she thought. But she had no talent, none whatever. She was too theatrical, if you understand what I mean. But I must admit, she always knew how to make a favorable impression on others. She had a natural gift for taking people in. As I told you, we know little or nothing of her life from the time she flew the
