“I know.”
“How come?”
“Man’s name. Got to be a tin can.”
“You an ole navy man?”
“Yes,” Buddwing said immediately, and without doubt.
“What kinda ship was you on?”
“Same as you. A tin can. The Fancher.”
“I think we ran into her when we was up in Japan,” Jesse said.
“That’s just where I left her,” Buddwing answered, grinning.
“No kiddin’? In Japan? When was that?”
“After the war.” He paused. “World War II. I left her in Sasebo and came back on a transport for discharge.”
“Where’d you put in? San Diego?”
“No, Treasure Island. Off San Francisco.”
“Yeah, nice town, San Francisco. Where’s this head, man? I got to go something fierce.”
He took Jesse into the men’s room of the Automat between 45th and 46th. When they came upstairs again, he asked, “Have you had lunch yet?”
“No, but I ain’t partial to the idea of puttin’ nickles in slots. Tries my patience.”
“There’s a hot-dog joint down the street,” Buddwing said. “Let me buy you lunch.”
“You don’t hafta,” Jesse said.
“I want to.”
“Well, okay, so long as you understan’ you ain’t beholden.”
“I understand that,” Buddwing said.
“Well, good, then.”
They continued walking downtown again. The day was still mild and clear. Buddwing walked with a long quick stride, and Jesse struggled to keep up with him on his shorter legs.
“How’d you like Japan?” Buddwing asked.
“Loved it,” Jesse said.
“What towns did you hit?”
“Well, Sasebo, same as you. And Nagasaki, and Yokohama, and Tokyo.”
“Ever get up north?”
“Ain’t Tokyo up north?”
“I meant up near Russia. Hakodate, up around there.”
“No. Where’s that? On Hokkaido?”
“Yes.”
“No, we never got up that way. We sure had some good times in Japan, though.”
“We sure did,” Buddwing said.
They found the hot-dog joint on the corner of 44th and Sixth, and they stood at the sidewalk counter and each had a hot dog with sauerkraut and mustard, and a cup of coffee. The total came to seventy cents.
Buddwing took the last dollar bill from his pocket. He put it on the counter, and the counterman rang up the sale and then returned a quarter and a nickel to him. Buddwing looked at the unequally divided thirty cents and wondered whether the counterman expected him to tip a nickel, a quarter, or nothing. He would have wanted to leave a ten-cent tip, but the division of the change now made that impossible. He did not want to seem cheap by leaving a five-cent tip on a seventy-cent order, or cheaper by leaving nothing at all. At the same time, this money was all that divided him from complete bankruptcy, and he did not feel he could extravagantly leave a quarter. He was about to ask the counterman to break the quarter for him, when Jesse nudged him in the ribs and said, “Take a look at that, mate.”
Buddwing turned and followed Jesse’s stare. The thing he was being asked to take a look at was a black Volkswagen that had managed to stall itself directly in the middle of the side street approaching the Sixth Avenue corner. As small as the car was, it had effectively blocked traffic on either side of it, and a medley of angry truck and automobile horns was honking all the way up to Broadway. A Chinese girl sat in patient inscrutability at the wheel of the car, trying the starter at judicious intervals while the horns frantically honked behind her, failing to change the situation an iota. A younger Chinese girl sat beside the one at the wheel, and she craned her head over her shoulder periodically to look behind her at the honking vehicles. As Buddwing watched, the younger girl stuck out her tongue at the honkers and then turned back to her companion and said something to her that caused her to laugh and then glanced up and saw Buddwing watching her from the sidewalk, and impulsively stuck her tongue out at him, too. Buddwing smiled.
“She’s giving you the old come-on,” Jesse said. “Why don’t we go see if we can’t just help those sweet little things?”
He moved away from the counter swiftly, walked directly to the driver’s side of the car and, leaning on the door, bent down to the open window and said, “Can I be of some assistance, ma’am?”
The Chinese girl, with her foot on the clutch and her hand on the ignition key, turned to look at Jesse in brief scorn, and then said, “Get lost, sailor.”
“I think maybe you’ve gone and flooded her,” Jesse said, grinning. He turned to Buddwing, who had come from the curb to stand in the middle of the street, and said, “Don’t you think she’s got her flooded, Sam?”
“I think she has,” Buddwing said, and he bent down to look into the car, but Jesse was blocking the window and all he could see was the younger girl’s face, and her solemn brown eyes studying him.
“I’m a machinist’s mate,” Jesse said, lying conversationally. “I can help you get it started, if you want me to.”
The driver studied him again, speculatively, and then said again, “Get lost.”
“Let him try, Sally,” the younger girl said. She kept looking at Buddwing as she said this, her face unsmiling, the slanted brown eyes watching him as she delivered the words to Sally. Sally turned to her and said something in Chinese, and the younger girl answered in Chinese and then gestured with one slender hand thrown back over her shoulder toward the trucks and cars that were creating a powerful din behind them. Sally shrugged and said, “Okay, okay,” and then turned to Jesse and smiled, and said, “All right, mate, go ahead.”
Jesse opened the car door, grinning, and Sally slid over on the seat toward the other girl, making room for him. He gestured with a palm-upward hand at the vehicles lined up behind the Volkswagen and shouted, “Keep your shirt on!” and then slid onto the seat. Buddwing stood in the gutter, watching the three cramped onto the tiny front seat of the car. Jesse studied the instrument panel with the scrutiny of a physician doing a yearly checkup, and then ducked his head below the wheel (Buddwing became suddenly aware that Sally was wearing a dress cut in Oriental style, slit very high on each side) and studied the brake pedal and the accelerator and the clutch and even the knob that turned on the heater, taking what seemed like an inordinately long time with his head bent and with Sally beside him, her leg and thigh showing in the slit of her skirt. Then he raised his head and said, “Yep,” mysteriously, and tried the ignition key. The car did not start.
“I’ll have to look under the hood,” Jesse said, and he opened the car door and stepped into the street again. A crowd had begun to gather now, curious passersby stopping to peer at the small car with the two Chinese girls, and at the sailor who again shushed the honking trucks and cars with an angry wave of his arms. Most of the pedestrians crowded the sidewalk, but some were bold enough to come into the street, forming a loose circle around the car, watching Jesse as he went to the front of the car, hearing Sally as she leaned out the window and said, “No, the engine is in the back.” The beat patrolman stopped on the corner and watched the crowd and listened to the honking horns and some choice bits of truck-driver Anglo-Saxon, but did nothing to relieve either the congestion or the mixture of gaiety and anger that seemed to converge on the corner. The gaiety was undeniable, a holiday mood seeming to settle on the crowd of people who swarmed about the Ismail car as Jesse inspected the engine. The spectators all wore those oddly self-conscious smiles that seem to say, “Aren’t these people crazy? Isn’t this crazy?” but are at the same time slightly embarrassed because the wearers of the smiles are enjoying the insanity and are indeed a part of it. The anger was undeniable as well, a fury in the sound of the horns echoing up and down the street, truck drivers who had delivery schedules to meet, cab drivers who wanted to drop off their fares and pick up new ones, gentlemen in Cadillacs and Continentals who were in a hurry to get crosstown to Sutton Place, all of them leaning on their horns in a frenzied cacophony as Jesse studied the compact engine and then came to the front of the car again.