Jim Boomer paid him a dollar for it. "How many of them you got?"
"I can have a hundred thousand ready to load out in ten minutes," the man said. "Eighty-eight cents each in hundred-thousand lots."
"Was that a trailer-load of steel tapes you shipped out this morning?" Art asked the man.
"No, that must have been something else. This is the first steel tape I ever made. Just got the idea when I saw you measuring my shack with that old beat-up one."
Art Slick and Jim Boomer went to the rundown building next door. It was smaller, about a six-foot cube, and the sign said Public Stenographer. The clatter of a typewriter was coming from it, but the noise stopped when they opened the door.
A dark, pretty girl was sitting in a chair before a small table. There was nothing else in the room, and no typewriter.
"I thought I heard a typewriter in here," Art said.
"Oh, that is me." The girl smiled. "Sometimes I amuse myself make typewriter noises like a public stenographer is supposed to."
"What would you do if someone came in to have some typing done?"
"What are you think? I do it of course."
"Could you type a letter for me?"
"Sure I can, man friend, two bits a page, good work, carbon copy, envelope and stamp."
"Ah, let's see how you do it. I will dictate to you while you type."
"You dictate first. Then I write. No sense mix up two things at one time."
Art dictated a long and involved letter that he had been meaning to write for several days. He felt like a fool droning it to the girl as she filed her nails. "Why is public stenographer always sit filing her nails?" she asked as Art droned. "But I try to do it right, file them down, grow them out again, then file them down some more. Been doing it all morning. It seems silly."
"Ah that is all," Art said when he had finished dictating.
"Not P.S. Love and Kisses?" the girl asked.
"Hardly. It's a business letter to a person I barely know."
"I always say P.S. Love and Kisses to persons I barely know," the girl said. "Your letter will make three pages, six bits. Please you both step outside about ten seconds and I write it. Can't do it when you watch." She pushed them out and closed the door.
Then there was silence.
"What are you doing in there, girl?" Art called.
"Want I sell you a memory course too? You forget already? I type a letter," the girl called.
"But I don't hear a typewriter going."
"What is? You want verisimilitude too? I should charge extra." There as a giggle, and then the sound of very rapid typing for about five seconds.
The girl opened the door and handed Art the three-page letter. It was typed perfectly, of course.
"There is something a little odd about this." Art said.
"Oh? The ungrammar of the letter is your own, sir. Should I have correct?"
"No. It is something else. Tell me the truth, girclass="underline" how does the man next door ship out trailer-loads of material from a building ten times too small to hold the stuff?"
"He cuts prices."
"Well, what are you people? The man next door resembles you."
"My brother-uncle. We tell everybody we are Innominee Indians."
"There is no such tribe," Jim Boomer said flatly.
"Is there not? Then we will have to tell people we are something else. You got to admit it sounds like Indian. What's the best Indian to be?"
"Shawnee," said Jim Boomer.
"Okay then we be Shawnee Indians. See how easy it is."
"We're already taken," Boomer said. "I'm a Shawnee and I know every Shawnee in town."
"Hi cousin!" the girl cried, and winked. "That's from a joke I learn, only the begin was different. See how foxy I turn all your questions."
"I have two-bits coming out of my dollar," Art said.
"I know," the girl said. "I forgot for a minute what design is on the back of the two-bitser piece, so I stall while I remember it. Yes, the funny bird standing on the bundle of firewood. One moment till I finish it. Here." She handed the quarter to Art Slick. "And you tell everybody there's a smoothie public stenographer here who types letters good."
"Without a typewriter," said Art Slick. "Let's go, Jim."
"P.S. Love and Kisses," the girl called after them.
The Cool Man Club was next door, a small and shabby beer bar. The bar girl could have been a sister of the public stenographer.
"We'd like a couple of Buds, but you don't seem to have a stock of anything," Art said.
"Who needs stock?" the girl asked. "Here is beers." Art would have believed that she brought them out of her sleeves, but she had no sleeves. The beers were cold and good.
"Girl, do you know how the fellow on the corner can ship a whole trailer-load of material out of a space that wouldn't hold a tenth of it?" Art asked the girl.
"Sure. He makes it and loads it out at the same time. That way it doesn't take up space, like if he made it before time."
"But he has to make it out of something," Jim Boomer cut in.
"No, no," the girl said. "I study your language. I know words. Out of something is to assemble, not to make. He makes."
"This is funny." Slick gaped. "Budweiser is misspelled on this bottle, the i before the e."
"Oh, I goof," the bar girl said. "I couldn't remember which way it goes so I make it one way on one bottle and the other way on the other. Yesterday a man ordered a bottle of Progress beer, and I spelled it Progers on the bottle. Sometimes I get things wrong. Here, I fix yours."
She ran her hand over the label, and then it was spelled correctly.
"But that thing is engraved and then reproduced," Slick protested.
"Oh, sure, all fancy stuff like that," the girl said. "I got to be more careful. One time I forget and make Jax-taste beer in Schlitz bottle and the man didn't like it. I had to swish swish change the taste while I pretended to give him a different bottle. One time I forgot and produced a green-bottle beer in a brown bottle. 'It is the light in here, it just makes it look brown,' I told the man. Hell, we don't even have a light in here. I go swish fast and make the bottle green. It's hard to keep from making mistake when you're stupid."
"No, you don't have a light or a window in here, and it's light," Slick said. "You don't have refrigeration. There are no power lines to any of the shanties in this block. How do you keep the beer cold?"
"Yes, is the beer not nice and cold? Notice how tricky I evade your question. Will you good men have two more beers?"
"Yes, we will. And I'm interested in seeing where you get them," Slick said.
"Oh look, is snakes behind you!" the girl cried.
"Oh how you startle and jump!" she laughed. "It's all joke. Do you think I will have snakes in my nice bar?"
But she had produced two more beers, and the place was as bare as before.
"How long have you tumble-bugs been in this block?" Boomer asked.
"Who keep track?" the girl said. "People come and go."
"You're not from around here," Slick said. "You're not from anywhere I know. Where do you come from? Jupiter?"
"Who wants Jupiter?" the girl seemed indignant. "Do business with a bunch of insects there, is all! Freeze your tail too."
"You wouldn't be a kidder, would you, girl?" Slick asked.
"I sure do try hard. I learn a lot of jokes but I tell them all wrong yet. I get better, though. I try to be the witty bar girl so people will come back."
"What's in the shanty next door toward the tracks?"
"My cousin-sister," said the girl. "She set up shop just today. She grow any color hair on bald-headed men. I tell her she's crazy. No business. If they wanted hair they wouldn't be bald-headed in the first place."
"Well, can she grow hair on bald-headed men?" Slick asked.
"Oh sure. Can't you?"
There were three or four more shanty shops in the block. It didn't seem that there had been that many when the men went into the Cool Man Club.