“No.”
“Okay, look at this. In your location it can’t miss. You get lots of mothers through here with their kids, right? Sometimes they got two or three kids, right? They’re going to be on the bus three or four hours, and the mother’s going to go crazy. The mother can buy Redbook from you, but what are the kids going to do—read Newsweek? On this card here you get no less than twenty-five puzzles, for kids, for grown-ups, for anybody. You get the Pigs in Clover Puzzle, the five linked rings we call the Olympic Puzzle, you get the takeapart Three-D Jigsaw Puzzle.”
The wizened man leaned forward. “I used to have that one with the twisted nails when I was a kid.”
“So why not order a card? You can keep the nails for old times’ sake, and you’ll still stand to make over six bucks clear when you sell the last puzzle.”
Breath of mingled bourbon and pizza touched Barnes’s face. “Say, can I look at them?”
Barnes glanced around; it was the sailor. “Certainly, sir. There’s hours of amusement in every one.”
The puzzles were hung on tabs punched from the cardboard. After blinking and poking several with a long finger, the sailor selected a pencil with a cord through a hole near the eraser. “How does this work?”
The buttons of the sailor’s pea jacket were all unfastened. Barnes pulled at the uppermost buttonhole and thrust the pencil through it, then pulled the cord tight.
The sailor pushed the pencil back through the buttonhole, but the cord was too short for him to take it out entirely. “Hey,” he said, “that’s great. How much?”
“Like it says on the card, just seventy-nine cents.”
The sailor produced a wallet.
“This is my sample card, and I don’t usually sell from it, but in your case I’ll make an exception. I can get another card from the factory. Want me to take that off for you?”
“Hell no.” The sailor covered the puzzle with one hand. “I’m gonna do it myself.” He pulled out a crumpled dollar. “Got change?”
Barnes plucked it from his hand. “No, but I’m sure this gentleman does.” He handed the dollar to the wizened man. “Do you have change, sir? Seventy-nine cents for me, twenty-one for this serviceman here.”
“I’m Phil Reeder,” the sailor said, extending his hand.
“Ozzie Barnes,” Barnes said, shaking it.
“I’m from the John Bozeman,” the sailor told him. “She’s a destroyer. Docked at Norfolk now. I got two weeks shore leave.”
“Congratulations,” Barnes said. The wizened man handed him change; Barnes gave the sailor two dimes and a penny and dropped the rest into his pocket. Something that had been coiled tightly inside him seemed to relax slightly.
“Say, what’s that one?”
“This?” It was hard to tell just where Reeder was looking.
“No. Over there.”
“Oh, that? We call it the Houdini Puzzle.” Barnes pulled it free of its cardboard tab. “See, the little man is Houdini, and he’s locked in a cell. The trick is to get him out.” He took one of the toy figure’s hands and pulled; the toy figure wedged between the bars. “Wait a minute. It can be done.” He loosened the figure and twisted it; a tiny bar caught it between the legs.
“Ouch!” Reeder said. He laughed.
“I’ll say. Well, it can be done. I guess I’m out of practice.”
“I want that one too.” Reeder got out his wallet again.
The wizened man glanced at the card. “Eighty-nine cents.”
“Hey, the last one was only seventy-nine.”
“They got all different prices,” the wizened man said. “That last one was only a pencil with a string through it.” He looked at Barnes for confirmation.
“You haven’t bought it yet,” Barnes reminded him.
Reeder thought Barnes was talking to him. “I know. You got change for a five?”
“Sure,” the wizened man said. He rang up eighty-nine on the register and gave Reeder four dollars and a nickel. “Six cents tax,” he explained.
Barnes was making mental calculations. “The board’s usually eleven forty-five,” he said.
“So take off seventy-nine and eighty-nine for the ones that’s sold. Should be about nine fifty.” The wizened man turned aside to wait on a woman buying Cosmopolitan.
“You’ve already got the eighty-nine. Take off the seventy-nine and it comes to eleven thirty.”
“The hell it does.”
“With tax.”
“What the hell do you mean, tax? This ain’t no retail sale, I’m buying them to sell again.”
Barnes said mildly, “You’re not giving me an order, you’re buying my sample.”
“I still don’t pay no tax. You don’t collect sales tax.”
Without looking up from the Houdini Puzzle, Reeder said, “You got tax from me.”
“Okay,” Barnes told the wizened man. “I’ll knock off the tax for a quick sale. Ten sixty-five, cash.”
“Deal.” The wizened man rang No Sale on his register and gave Barnes the money.
Barnes stood the card of puzzles on some magazines. “Now here’s another beauty for a man in your business. It’s a hundred funny bookmarks, all different.”
“Nothing else,” the wizened man said. “I only got so much room for this kinda stuff.”
“I haven’t even showed you my best—”
“No more.”
“Okay. When you see how the puzzles go, you’ll want something else. I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.”
“Not if I see you first,” the wizened man said; but it was routine bellicosity, without malice.
Reeder asked, “You know where we can get a drink around here, mate? I want to buy you a drink.”
“Not this early.” Barnes glanced at his wrist before he recalled that his watch was gone. “If you want to buy me something, how about a sandwich? There’s a place that looks good right outside the station.”
As they stepped outside, a bus turned a corner two blocks up, maneuvering as ponderously as a warship.
Candy & Sweet
Candy did not leave the hotel at once. It was cold outside and warm inside, and she was conscious that her white raincoat was unlined, and that her feet, in the black rubber boots the police had given her, were without stockings. She had been arrested many times and did not greatly object to jail; she toyed with the notion of soliciting here, in a part of the city where soliciting was permitted only after midnight and with the greatest discretion. Without money to pay her fine, she might easily be held until the worst of winter was past. In the end she decided against it out of loyalty to Stubb; but when she had decided, she found herself thinking seriously of Free’s treasure and “High Country.”
A lobby shop selling costly women’s wear had already opened its doors. Candy browsed for three-quarters of an hour, though the woman who ran the shop was nervous about her; because she had no rings, Candy decided. She explained, when she was able to begin a conversation, that her engagement-and-wedding set was too tight since she had put on so much weight, and she had left them upstairs in her room.
The woman was nervous anyway. Candy tried on several dresses and a pants suit she liked very much. She would have suggested that she wear the pants suit while she went up for her credit cards, but she did not think it would work.
The lobby was crowded when she stepped into it again, and there was a long line of businessmen at the cashier’s counter. A few were traveling together and talked about restaurants and flights; most did not talk at all. Candy found a comfortable chair and sat down to watch.
A hotel dick crossed the lobby. He was dressed like a businessman, but she knew who he was by his expression and the way he walked. He did not seem to notice her. Hookers, she thought, aren’t supposed to be up this early, and besides, there’s no business now. She was not sure if she had met this particular dick or not. She was usually pretty tippy when she met hotel dicks.