Everybody who was anybody seemed to live and work over some kind of joint in this place. The nice clean boy told me to go around to the back, where I would find a door marked Private. Naturally.
I thanked him, and then I added, "Oh-and don't call me Sir. I work here just like you."
"Yes sir," he said promptly. "I know that."
Very polite. But that sir business made me feel my thirtytwo years. Maybe more.
I went around back and opened the door that always had to say Private when it was around back and went up a maroon carpeted stairway that was walled in with way-out paintings that made you feel like you were trying to climb out of the paint pots of a surrealist artist's nightmare.
I came to another door. It didn't say Private so I opened it and stepped into a blaze of light. It was like stepping into an interrogation room. Some kind of baby spot stood back in a corner and hit me all over with a brffliant pink light.
I had a quick, vague impression of Swedish modern as I put up an arm to ward off that damn glare, and then something went ssst right by my head and thh-ok in the paneled wall.
I was already on my way to the floor.
It was reasonably soft-about two inches of thick carpeting and as woolly as a fat lamb. All I hurt was my left elbow. Then I turned a little and glanced up at the knife jutting out from the wall. It was no longer than a butcher knife and it had a mother-of-pearl handle and no hilt-guard.
I knew that kind of knife. In fact there was a time when I used to have bad dreams about them. My wife used to throw them back when we were in carny together.
A laugh that was a sort of throaty tinkle, if there is such a laugh, came out of the darkness beyond the baby spot. And I knew who I was going to see when the rest of the lights went on.
They went on and I saw I was right about the Swedish modern motif and about the possessor of the unusual laugh. My ex-wife was reclined on some kind of cushy sofa that seemed to be made entirely of satin pillows. She was wearing one of those gold-glittery outfits with the toreador jacket and skintight pants. And gold sandals. And her toenails too. Gold.
She had changed her hair. It used to make Monroe's platinum head look like dishwater blonde. Now she was flame headed. But her face hadn't changed in five years. The same cold, sensual, calculating look that I had fallen in love with when I was twenty and stupid was still there.
I looked to be sure she didn't have another knife handy before I picked myself off the rug.
"You'd never draw a crowd with that toss, May," I said. "It was off a foot."
"You lying sonofabitch, darling." She smiled at me. "It took the peachfuzz off your ear. Do you want to change your pants?"
"No," I said. "I'm still wearing my diapers."
I pulled the knife loose. It gave me a bit of a struggle. May always did have a beautiful throwing arm. That's what used to worry me-when we'd have our fights.
The knife had perfect balance. No matter how you tossed it the harpoon-sharp blade always led the way to the target. The mother-of-pearl handles had been her trademark. She had always been a great one for classy show. And it looked like she had made it. Mrs. Robert Cochrane. She couldn't be but twenty-five years younger than the canny Irishman.
I wagged the blade at her. "Fun and games, huh May?"
"You know goddam well I could have put your eye out if I'd wanted to, sweetie," she said sweetly. "I've kept my hand in."
I was a believer. May always kept her hand in, and not just with her knives.
"Way in," I said and nodded around at the big, cushy room. "Some opulence."
"Never mind your goddam book words, Thax," she said. She never could stand big words. At least not when I used them.
"A nice mark," I amended. "Very nice."
It was the freaky coincidence of the thing-my ending up at Neverland and her being Mrs. Never Never-that surprised me. Not the fact that she had made out like a foreign loan. Some people, especially some females, are slated for affluence no matter how far down the social strata they start. The crystal gazers like to call it Kismet.
May had come out of one of those naughty houses they used to have in San Berdoo, California. I think the district was called D Street. But it hadn't phased her. The first time she was old enough to recognize the significance of the two-dollar bill one of the truck driver customers handed her mother she knew exactly what it was that made the world go around and she climbed aboard to get her share of the spin.
I had been a husky young carny kid with a good spiel and she had used me for just as long as I was worth anything to her. When she outgrew me she started looking around for a way to dump me. And I had found her the way.
But what really amazed me was that Irishman-Robert Cochrane, her husband. He must have known who I was once I told him my name, and he must have known about the jam I got into when May and I were working together for the Brody outfit. Yet he hadn't said a word. He had gone ahead and hired me. Funny guy. Unless May had held out on him.
"You tell Cochrane about you and me?" I asked her.
"Sure," she said. "When I first came to him. I have nothing to hide. Anyhow, he knew my name. Word gets around, you know."
"Jesus if it doesn't. Everybody seems to know about me like I'd been here all my life. You have anything to do with hiring me?"
May smiled at me. Call it that, anyhow.
"I didn't even know you were on the lot, darling, till Bill Duff told me."
"Good old Bill," I said. "Did he go to that dentist I recommended before I clipped his eyetooth?"
May kept right on smiling at me. She didn't say anything.
"Cozy for you and Bill, huh?" I suggested. "This setup."
"Duff showed up just like you did," she said in a stainless-steel voice. "Broke and whimpering for a job. Rob gave him the job because Rob can't turn down a carny buddy with an empty grouch bag. I would have told Duff to go take a flying leap at the spider lady."
"From what I understand he already had way before we met him," I said. But I said it out of habit-automatic reaction. I was still entranced by the knowledge that the Irishman had hired me even though he knew all about me. A very funny guy.
"Well," I said, "it doesn't really matter."
"So you always say, sweetie," May said.
I came back to the Swedish modern suite above the Queen Anne Cottage.
"Look, May. Times have been soso with me." I fluctuated one hand palm-down in mid air to illustrate the soso-ness of my times. "I need the job. Are you going to queer it?"
She started to uncoil like a cat on the sofa. She reached a very pale gold-tipped hand up to me.
"Rob does all the hiring and firing, sweetie. I wouldn't dream of saying a word. Come here."
"Why?"
"Kiss me."
"Why?"
"Curiosity."
She had something there. I was curious too, to see if it would be the same. Five years is a long time. I sank into the satin pillows and she put a hand on my neck and I put one on her waist and we pulled in. Then she opened her mouth and I covered it with mine and her tongue started to leap, and by damn if it wasn't the same. The same as when I was a husky young carny kid of twenty. Not the same as those last few years before she threw me over.
My left hand immediately grew bored because what kick can a hand get out of holding a woman's waist? So I let it do what it wanted to do and it went sliding upward to find something of a more tactile interest. Once it found it May pulled back.
"I said kiss, sweetie," she reminded me.
"You didn't say kiss what though, did you?" I grinned at her.
She straightened up and went pat-pat at her too perfect fiery hair.
"I rather imagine, darling, that you are going to get yourself into sex trouble again. You're certainly showing all the indications."