Pepper grinned. “Come on this way.”
They crossed the empty street.
“You meet a new person, you go with him,” Kid mused, “and suddenly you get a whole new city.” He’d offered it as a small and oblique compliment.
Pepper only glanced at him, curiously.
“You go down new streets, you see houses you never saw before, pass places you didn’t know were there. Everything changes.”
“This way.” Pepper ducked between buildings not two feet apart.
They sidled between the flaking boards. The ground was a-glitter from the broken windows.
Pepper said, “Sometimes it changes even if you go the same way.”
Kid recalled conversations with Tak, but decided not to question Pepper further, who didn’t seem too good with abstractions. In the alley, Kid stopped to brush the glass off his bare foot.
“You okay?” Pepper asked.
“Callous like a rock.”
They walked between the gaping garages. A blue car—’75 Olds?—had been driven through a back walclass="underline" snapped boards and sagging beams, scattered glass, skid marks across the roadway. The car was impaled in broken wood to its dangling door. Who, Kid wondered, had been injured in the wreck, who had been injured in the house? Hanging over the sill of another smashed window was a blue telephone receiver—hurled out in fear or fury? Accidentally dropped or jarred?
“Uhn.” Pepper gestured with his chin toward an open door.
As they walked the dark corridor, Kid smelled traces of something organic and decayed, which was about to remind him of—when he remembered what, they had already come out on the porch.
Somebody in workman’s greens and orange construction boots, on a high ladder against the corner lamppost—it was a woman he had noticed his first night in the bar—was unscrewing the street sign.
Metal ground metal; HAZE ST came out of its holder. From the ladder top she picked up AVE Q, inserted it, and began to screw the bolts.
“Hey?” Kid was both amused and curious. “Which one of those is right?”
She frowned back over her shoulder. “Neither one, honey, far as I know.”
But Pepper was crossing toward the unmarked, familiar door. Kid followed, looking around the street, estranged by smoky daylight. “I don’t think I’ve ever been here this time of day before.”
Pepper just grunted.
The door they entered was two from the bar entrance.
At the top of the steps, Pepper blocked the cracks of light and thumped with the back of his hand.
“All right, all right. Just a second, dear. It isn’t the end of the world—” the door swung in—“yet.” Around Bunny’s thin neck a white silk scarf was held by a silver napkin ring. “And if it is, I certainly don’t want to hear about it at this hour of the morning. Oh, it’s you.”
“Hi!” Pepper’s voice mustered brightness and enthusiasm. “This is a friend of mine, the Kid.”
Bunny stepped back.
As Kid walked in, Bunny pointed a knuckly manicured finger at Pepper. “It’s his teeth, actually.”
Pepper gave his stained and pitted grin.
“Peking Man—do you know about Peking Man? Peking Man died of an ulcerated tooth.” Bunny brushed back bleached, silken hair. “Show me a boy with bad teeth and I just feel so sorry for him, that I—well, I’m not responsible. Pepper, darling, where have you been?”
“Jesus, I’m thirsty,” Pepper said. “You got something to drink? You couldn’t get a God-damn drink of water in the God-damn park.”
“On the sideboard, dear. It hasn’t moved.”
Pepper poured wine from a jug with an ornate label first into a handleless cup, then a jelly jar.
“Have you any idea where he was? I know he’s not going to tell me.” Bunny dodged while Pepper handed Kid the jar.
“You get the glass ’cause you’re company.”
“You could have poured one for me too, dear. But you’re famous for not thinking of things like that.”
“Jesus Christ, sweetheart, I thought you had one already working. I really did.” But Pepper made no move to pour another.
Bunny raised exasperated eyebrows and went to get a cup.
Pepper gestured with his. “You don’t tell her where I was. That’s for me to know and her to find out.” He finished his wine and went for seconds. “Go on, have a seat. Sit down. Bunny, did you throw me out of here last night?”
“The way you were carrying on, doll, I should have.” Bunny ducked under Pepper’s elbow and, cup on fingertips, returned. “But I didn’t get a chance. Have you ever noticed that about people who are dumb in a particular way? In-sen-si-tive—” Bunny’s eyes closed on the antepenultimate—” to everything. Except one second before catastrophe: Then they split. Oh, they know when that’s coming all right. I guess they have to. Otherwise they’d be dead. Or missing an arm, or a head, or something.” Bunny’s eyes narrowed at Pepper (who, on his third cup already, turned to the room, a little more relaxed). “Darling, I could have killed you last night. I could have committed murder. Did I throw you out? If I did, you wouldn’t be here now. But I’m calmer today.”
Kid decided not to ask what Pepper had done.
“Go on,” Pepper said. “Sit down. On the couch. That’s where I sleep, so it’s okay. She sleeps in there.”
“My boudoir.” Bunny gestured toward another room, where Kid could see a mirror and a dressing table with bottles and jars. “Pepper’s very eager to clear that up with all his new friends. Yes, do have a seat.”
Kid sat.
“Oh, there’ve been a few times—but you were probably too high to remember those—when you’ve turned into quite a tiger. Pepper, darling, you shouldn’t be so concerned about what other people think.”
“If I cared what he thought, I wouldn’t ’a brung him in here,” Pepper said. “You want some more wine, Kid, just take it. Bunny don’t mind.”
“Actually—” Bunny stepped back into the boudoir door—“Pepper is a part of that tragic phenomenon, the Great American Un-screwed. A lot of talk about how much he wants to, but if you want my opinion, I don’t think Pepper has gone to bed with anything in all his twenty-nine years that didn’t just roll him over in his sleep. That he rather likes. But God forbid he wake up!”
“I don’t talk about doin’ anybody I ain’t never done,” Pepper said, “which is more’n I can say for you. Why don’t you lay off?”
From the couch, Kid said: “I just came around to see if somebody was in Teddy’s. I want to—”
“Well, take a look, if you like.” Bunny unblocked the door. “But I doubt it. In here. Where you can see.”
Wondering, Kid got up and walked past Bunny into the second room. Though nothing was out of place, it gave the impression—with three chairs, a bed, a dozen pictures on the wall from magazines (but all framed)—of clutter. Oranges, reds, purples, and blues massed in the bedspread. Yellow plastic flowers hung over the back of a pink ceramic dove. Interrupting the floral wallpaper was a black curtain.
“In there.”
Kid stepped around a grubby, white vinyl hassock (everything had speckles of silver glitter on it) and pushed back black velvet.
Through cage bars, he saw upturned stools clustering the counter. Under a skylight he had never noticed before—this was the first time he had seen the place during the day—the empty booths and tables looked far more rickety: the whole room seemed larger and shabbier.
“Is the bartender there?” Bunny asked.
“No.”
“Then they aren’t even open.”
Kid dropped the curtain.
“Isn’t that convenient? I just run right out there and do my thing, then run right back in here, and am shut of you all. Come on back inside. Don’t run away.” Bunny motioned Kid into the living room. “I really think scorpions are perfectly fascinating. You’re the only really effective enforcement organization in the city. Pepper, what was the name of your friend with all the ugly muscles and that lovely, broken…?” Bunny nudged his upper lip with his forefinger. “…This one here?”