And then Freed stepped in to mediate the money situation, boundaries between individual stakes having been obscured in the commotion.
“Now who had the brand-new fifties?”
“I did,” Christo said. “But where’s his ten? Let’s find Little Stevie’s ten first.”
Freed stuck a hand inside his shirt, somewhere near his heart. He looked at Pierce and clicked his tongue. “You get the man’s money together and then you get him the fuck out of here.”
In came Eddie the Agent massaging his receiver ear. “Hey, what’s happening, beautiful people?”
Warm rain had come with darkness into the streets. Night walkers kept close to the buildings, rushing along with heads down, jostling as they passed. Cabs poured down the wide avenues with wipers slapping and the bleeding edges of distant traffic lights, taillights were sucked up into particles of mist — sweat mixed with steam, steam with soot.
Christo shadowboxed his way past a restaurant window, college girls inside blowing on their soup. His pockets bulged. “Man, but I put out their lights.”
“Sometimes,” Pierce said, “sometimes I wonder why I have anything to do with you.”
“What’s your problem now? It was like printing my own money. I cleaned up on those ginks and now I’m ready to invest.”
“But, jazz, you burned the game down. You fucked me up with those people and some of them are customers.”
“The hell with them. We got a whole new operation, partner. New worlds to conquer. With my radar I can put us on to most of the psychiatric shoppers in this city, doctors and patients both. Who needs drugs more than they do?”
Pierce caught him by the belt loops, pulled him out of the path of an oncoming bicyclist. “Why don’t we go stash that in my safe at home before it works its way out of your pockets?”
“No, I want to feel it and look at it and spend it. Let’s go get some cocktails and a few pounds of meat. I’m paying.”
Christo had never tasted a Rio Rumba before. It contained absinthe and three different kinds of rum. He had four of them before dinner and had to have someone cut up his sirloin for him. Just outside they’d run into some people Pierce knew, an AP radio reporter and her husband. She was small and aggressive and undernourished. He had a couple of children back in Venezuela and had married her to keep from being deported.
“Come on. You have to line your stomach with something if we’re all going to make a night of it.”
She was carving his meat and feeding it to him. Nice action. He ought to find out her name.
They bar-hopped their way down Second Avenue in the general direction of a birthday party. Some fanatic in a plastic derby started buying drinks in a place by the Queensboro Bridge, so they lingered there awhile. Largely drowned out by Irish reels from the juke box, Pierce tried to talk politics with the husband. Christo and Monique (the name he’d given her for the evening) slipped out of their shoes, chalked the floor and played hopscotch. By the time they made the party it was well past midnight and running steady. The lights were off and the music was loud and it smelled like the inside of a rain boot. Monique danced until the sweat ran in her eyes. She had Christo up against the side of the refrigerator, groping with one hand, tugging at her pantyhose. She whispered something unintelligible in his ear and then a light blinked on, blinding white. The refrigerator door was open, someone saying, “Where’s the damn beer?”
Later Christo got into an ugly, window-rattling argument with a woman, both of whose parents were psychiatrists, who became so angry she spat in the host’s fish tank. They left the party by popular demand and visited a few more bars. Things went entirely out of focus. Somewhere in there as the morning wore on they landed in an after-hours Italian social club, Pierce and Monique shooting an endless eight-ball game while her husband slept on his arms at the bar and Christo belched gingerly, sipped expresso. Monique dropped ashes on the pool table and laughed like an idiot. But finally, inevitably, everyone got crashed out and depressed and went home.
Christo had to really lean on the bell before anyone came to unlock the lobby door. The night porter didn’t see any reason for anyone to be awake at this hour. Christo gave him a carton of Italian cigarettes he found under one arm. The porter accepted and kept grumbling. Christo stood in the motionless elevator with the door closed for some time before he remembered to push the button.
He was going to beat all over the door, but Tildy answered right away.
“Morning.”
“Is it?”
“Okay if I come in?”
“Sorry.”
He brought up his arms and she dodged away from him. “You mad with me?”
“Not particularly.”
“You can’t be mad with this.” He emptied his pockets one after another, greasy, misshapen doughnuts of money piling up on the bed.
“You’ve been wobbling around all night with that on you?”
“Yeah, I could just kiss myself.”
“And how soon will the cops be here?”
“No, baby, I made those cards fly tonight and it’s mine. Coulda made ’em swim if I wanted.” He reached for her again, fell forward, steadied himself on the bed. “What is … What is this about?”
There under all the green paper, tidily lined up with the stripes on the coverlet, were Tildy’s clothes all folded and ready for packing.
“I’m through,” she said, turning her back and looking for a cigarette. “I’m off.”
“Hold it there. We’ll have to talk about this.”
“I’d really rather not go into it.”
“Too cold.” Christo sat roughly on the floor. “It’s panic and I’m not even sure I like you.”
She bent and clasped her cold hands behind his neck. “Has nothing to do with you, so don’t feel bad.”
“But I was thinking we could be …” His head was so heavy and slow; he pressed hard on the bone between his eyes. “Partners.”
“You’re better off.” He caught her wrist when she tried to get up. “But you’re too drunk, Jimmy. I’m not going to try and follow your eyes and pound words into you. It’s like writing in sand.”
“I’m down, I’m all the way down. So talk to me. You can call me Jimmy, but just talk to me, tell me the story.”
She flopped down in surrender with that cigarette still unlit. “Not a very interesting story, a girl stuck in neutral … I came up here with you to get away, right? But nothing happened. I had three tosses for my quarter and didn’t score. That’s when you walk away. You go home and take care of your husband and wait on tables like any other ordinary broad.”
“But that’s all wrong. You don’t belong with that chump. And you don’t want to play hauling pitchers of beer and getting your ass pinched by guys in canvas hats.”
“Forget about Karl. You don’t know what that is.”
“But you’re wasting it all, we both know it. It’s easy to say: ‘This is not how I pictured it. Not at all.’ Sure, easy. Everyone knows how to give up, but is that really what you want? To just fade into the wallpaper?”
“Very nice, Jimmy. But I’ve heard all the stories, I’ve been hearing them since I was sixteen. And time just keeps roaring by. A lot of years people have been hitting on me. The circuit should have made me tough enough to get what I wanted on the ‘outside,’ seems like it just wore me out instead. When I close my eyes all I see are, are these, what — landscapes from some distant, unreal past. I feel this dull, maybe I should be dull. So I guess you’re right, I guess I do want to fade into the wallpaper.”