“That’s what you think.” Fenster saluted with his beer bottle.
“Well, he didn’t misplace it, actually. It went somewhere else when he wasn’t looking. Paul, this is the Kid.” (Kidd wondered if he were projecting Tak’s lack of enthusiasm.) “Come on over and sit down.”
“Hello.” Kidd nodded toward Fenster, who wasn’t looking at him, hadn’t heard him, apparently did not recognize him. Well, he didn’t feel like talking anyway, so could be amused at Fenster’s obliqueness.
“Come on, come on.” Tak headed them toward a booth, glanced apprehensively at Kidd again.
Gesturing with his bottle, Fenster continued: “Oh, there’s a cause all right! Maybe you’ve lost ninety-five per cent of your population, but you’re still the same city you were before—”
“You weren’t here, before.” Tak sat at the outside edge of the seat, so Fenster had to sit across the table. Then Tak slipped over, making room for Kidd, who noted the whole maneuver and wondered if Fenster had.
Kidd sat. Tak’s leg immediately swung against his in warm, if unwanted, reassurance.
“That’s not what I mean,” Fenster said. “Bellona was…what? Maybe thirty percent black? Now, even though you’ve lost so many people, bet it’s closer to sixty. From my estimate, at any rate.”
“All living in harmony, peace, and brotherly love—”
“Bullshit,” Fenster said.
“—with the calm, clear, golden afternoon only occasionally torn by the sobs of some poor white girl dishonored at the hands of a rampaging buck.”
“What are you trying to do, show off for the kid there?” Fenster grinned at Kidd. “I met Tak here the first day I got to Bellona. He’s a really together guy you know? He likes to pretend he’s short on brains. Then he lets you hang yourself.” Fenster still hadn’t recognized him.
Kidd nodded over his steaming glass. The fumes stung; he smiled back and felt ill.
“Oh, I’m the God-damn guardian of the gate. I’ve spoken to more people on their first day in this city than you could shake a stick at.” Tak sat back. “Let me clue you. It’s the people I take time to speak to again on the third, fourth, and fifth day you should watch.”
“Well, you’re still kidding yourself if you think you don’t have a black problem here.”
Tak suddenly sat forward and put his worn leather elbows on the table. “You’re telling me? What I want to know is how you’re going to do anything about it sitting up there on Brisbain Avenue?”
“I’m not at Calkins’ anymore. I’ve moved back to Jackson. Down home again.”
“Have you now? Well, how did your stay work out?”
“Hell—I guess it was nice of him to invite me. I had a good time. He has quite a place up there. We got into a couple of talks. Pretty good, I think. He’s an amazing man. But with that constant weekend bash going, thirty-eight days a month it looks like, I don’t know how he has time to take a leak, much less write half a newspaper every day, and run what’s left of the God-damn town. I outlined a couple of ideas: a switchboard, a daycare center, a house-inspection program. He say he wants to cooperate. I believe him…as much as you can believe anybody, today. Since there’s as little control around here as there is, I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets more done than you’d expect, you know?”
Tak turned his hands up on the table. “Just remember, nobody voted him up there.”
Fenster sat forward too. “I’ve never been that down on dictators. Long as they didn’t dictate me.” He laughed and drank more beer.
Brandy sips dropped in hot knots to Kidd’s stomach and untied. He moved his leg away from Tak’s. “Did you talk to him about that Harrison article?” Kidd asked Fenster.
“George Harrison?”
“Yeah.”
“Hell, that’s just a whole lot of past noise. There’re real problems that have to be dealt with now. Have you ever walked up Jackson Avenue?”
“I’ve crossed it.”
“Well, take a good look around it, talk to the people who live there before you go on to me about any of that George Harrison horseshit.”
“Paul here doesn’t approve of George.” Tak nodded deeply.
“I don’t approve or disapprove.” Fenster clinked his bottle on the wood. “Sadism simply isn’t my bag. And I don’t hold with anybody committing rape on anybody. But if you want to associate with him, that’s your problem, not mine. I think making all that to-do over it is the worst sort of red herring.”
“If you’re back down on Jackson, then you got him for a next-door neighbor; so you’re more or less stuck with associating with him, huh? I just have to be friendly in the bar.” Suddenly Tak slapped the table edge: “You know what the problem is, Paul? George is nicer than you.”
“Huh?”
“No, I mean: I know you both, I like you both. But I like George more.”
“Hell, man, I see those posters Reverend Amy’s giving out. I know what you guys in here like—”
“No,” Tak said. “No, you’re missing the point.”
“Like hell I am—Hey, you know?” Fenster turned to Kidd. “Have you ever read those articles, the ones in the issue about the riot, and the other issue with the interview?”
“Huh? No, but I heard about them.”
“Tak hasn’t read them either.”
“I’ve heard enough about them,” Tak echoed.
“But here’s the point. Everybody’s heard about the articles. But since I’ve been here, I’ve only talked to one person who actually says he read them.”
“Who?” Tak asked.
“George Harrison.” Fenster sat back and looked satisfied.
Kidd tilted his brandy. “I met somebody who read them.”
“Yeah?” Fenster asked. “Who?”
“The girl he screwed. And her family. Only they didn’t recognize her in the pictures.” From something that happened on Fenster’s face without destroying the smile, Kidd decided maybe Fenster wasn’t so bad after all.
“You met her?”
“Yeah.” Kidd drank. “You probably will too. Everybody keeps telling me how small the city is. Hey, Tak, thanks for the drink.” He started to stand.
Tak said, “You sure you’re all right, Kidd?”
“Yeah. I feel better.” He nodded at Fenster, then walked, relieved, to the bar.
When Jack said, “Hey, how you doing?” Kidd started. His relief, the shallowest of things, vanished.
“Hello,” he said. “Fine. How you been?”
“I been fine.” Jack’s shirt was wrinkled, his eyes red, his cheeks unshaven. He looked very happy. “I just been fine. How are you? And your girlfriend?”
“I’m fine,” Kidd repeated, nodding. “She’s fine.”
Jack laughed. “That’s great. Yeah, that’s really great. Say, I want you to meet a friend of mine. This is Frank.” Jack stepped back.
“Hello.” With a high, bald forehead and neck-length hair, Frank had apparently decided to grow a beard perhaps a week ago: I give them to you crossed, I take them uncrossed…yes, that was who it was. Only he had put on a green shirt with milky snaps instead of buttons; and washed his hands.
“This,” Jack explained to Frank, “is the friend of Tak’s I was telling you about who writes the poems. Only I can’t remember his name.”
“Kidd,” Kidd said.
“Yeah, they call him the Kid.” Jack continued his explanation. “Kid, this is Frank. Frank was in the army, and he writes poems too. I was telling him all about you, before. Wasn’t I?”
“Yeah, I’ve seen you around the park.” Frank nodded. “Jack was telling me you were a poet?”