With no one forcing us to the Union Floor to see if we can spot anyone we know there who might be holding.
No one forcing us to do that at all, especially now that the habit is kicked. Well, it wasn’t even a really bad habit when you get right down to it, not if you can kick it clean away in a week. How bad can a habit be if you can shake it so easy? It might not even be called a habit at all, if you can just drop it like that. Why, right now — would you believe it — I don’t feel any need for the stuff, just a need to hock this bag, so how bad could the habit have been?
Hell, there are people who can’t even break the smoking habit in a week!
Of course, this is an entirely different kind of habit, naturally. If you could call it a habit at all.
Well, it doesn’t matter what you call it because I am no longer an addict, anyway. All I have to do is hock this bag of Bud’s, a fellow shouldn’t leave an expensive bag laying around in his closet, this is a damn fine-looking bag, maybe it’ll bring twenty, Christ, what twenty couldn’t buy, enough stuff to last me a few days — if, of course, I was interested in buying stuff, which I’m definitely not. I’m only interested in hocking this bag.
Why?
Why, to have a few bills in my pocket, that’s why. What’s a man without a few bills in his pocket? Nothing.
So let’s find Honest John and get rid of this bag, it’s getting heavier as I go along, this goddamn bag is burning a hole in my pocket — how’s that for a mixed metaphor, Buddy-boy?
Aren’t there any hock shops at all in this crumby neighborhood? Don’t people hock things around here? Do I have to go all the way downtown? Well, it doesn’t matter because I’ve got to go to the Union Floor, anyway, after I hock the bag, but it seems as if a man should be able to hock something in his own neighborhood if he wanted to, not that it’s my neighborhood, I wouldn’t have it if you handed it to me with a golden key and a lifetime pass to the RKO Palace.
He walked up Seventy-second Street, and he passed the Provident Loan Society, and he wondered if he should try hocking the bag there, but he decided against it in favor of the shops with which he was familiar. He caught a train on Broadway, and he sat in the car and watched the faces around him, and he thought, They know I’m going on a trip.
I’m wearing a good jacket, and I look pretty good, in fact I look pretty damn good, and they see this expensive bag at my feet and they’re thinking, Look at that lucky bastard, heading down for Penn Station, probably going on a short vacation somewheres, or maybe a fifty-million-dollar business trip, picking up a few oil wells here or there, or a brassiere factory, or something. Envying me like crazy because their ant jobs pay thirty-two-fifty per, and they couldn’t afford a vacation right now — even if they had the money.
He got off the train, and he walked down toward Sixth Avenue, wondering why anyone would want to mutilate such a sweet-sounding street to “Avenue of the Americas,” and wondering if anyone except the mayor ever called it that. The pawnshops were lined up in a row, eeny-meeny-miney-mo.
He put on his best Rich-Man-Needing-Some-Pin-Money look and walked into the closest shop. The shop was small. He felt at home in it immediately. This was where he belonged, a big businessman making a deal for an expensive piece of luggage he’d picked up in Venezuela. God, there were so many things in a pawnshop! The jetsam of a vast army in retreat, the Army of Humanity, fleeing from the enemy, Life. Guitars and trumpets and accordions and cameras and projectors and fishing rods and knives and guns and watches and rings and bracelets and coffeepots and chamber pots and chafing dishes and fish dishes and fifty-dollar German gold pieces and feelthy pictures, Mac? Sorry, wrong pew.
The proprietor was a small, lean man with a cast in one eye. He walked sluggishly to where Andy stood, and his good eye studied Andy, and then he said, “Yes?”
Andy swung the bag up onto the counter. The proprietor studied it.
“Yours?” he asked.
“Of course,” Andy said.
The proprietor ran his small hands over the leather. His mouth kept working as his hands moved, as if he were grumbling silently to himself, as if this were the worst piece of luggage he’d seen in his entire lifetime, as if he would throw Andy out of the shop at any moment. He clicked open the snaps and then looked inside the bag. His nostrils twitched, his mouth worked. He was very upset, this man. This man needed Carter’s Little Liver Pills, Andy thought, in huge quantities.
“How much do you want?” the little man asked.
“How much will you give?” Andy said.
“Five dollars.”
Andy took the bag from the counter without saying a word. He was starting for the door when the little man called, “Hey, wait a minute.”
Andy walked back to the counter.
“Where you going?” the little man said, his head tilted, the cast in his eye giving him a gnomish look.
“You said five dollars,” Andy said. “The bag cost a hundred new.”
“You’re a liar,” the man said, “but I’m used to liars.”
“And you’re a crook,” Andy said, “but I’m used to crooks.”
“Listen, you want five?”
“Do I look crazy?”
“How much do you want?”
“Twenty,” Andy said, figuring the little man would come down to fifteen.
“You have heat stroke,” the man said. “I’ll call an ambulance.”
“When I want tired jokes, I’ll try television,” Andy said, pleased with the way the bargaining was going, enjoying the bargaining as much as he’d enjoyed anything in the past week.
“Six dollars,” the man said, “and I’m not making a cent.”
“Good-by,” Andy said.
“Just a minute, just a minute. You look like a nice young feller, need a few dollars to take in the city. Okay, I’m a man who’ll help you out. I was new in town once myself, had to hock my luggage, too.”
“Mister, I was born and raised in Brooklyn,” Andy said.
“Why didn’t you say so?” the man answered. “For a native New Yorker, I’ll go to seven-fifty and lose a few bucks on the deal.”
“You’ll go it alone, friend,” Andy said.
“I can’t do better than seven-fifty,” the man said, shrugging.
“Well, it’s been nice,” Andy said, and he started out of the shop. He waited for the man to call him back, but there was no further offer. He opened the door, and the bell tinkled, and he stepped onto the sidewalk and into the moving stream of pedestrians.
That cheap cockeyed bastard, he thought. Seven-fifty. Took me for a hick from Squaresville at first, and then jacked his price a big two and a half bucks when he figured I knew the score. Seven-fifty! I can get more for the bag if I sell it to a necktie salesman.
Disgustedly, he walked into the next shop. He had been happy with the bargaining, but only while he thought he would get his price. Fifteen dollars would set him up fine. Fifteen dollars would be the ticket, all right, and the more he thought of that ticket the more anxious he was to conclude the deal, get this goddamn bag off his back. What does a guy have to do to get a little gold, anyway? Hock his mother? He was angry even before the new owner came out of his cage. A small plaque on the cage read “M. Daniels.” Andy digested the name and then digested Daniels as the man walked past the array of junk behind his counter. He was a tall man with loose bones, a man who seemed somehow unhinged as he ambled toward Andy, a bright smile on his face.