I woke coughing a few hours later. The air had been all but replaced by a noxious mix of tar, motor oil, and old chewing gum, which meant that one of the hot dog vendors who kept his cart in the storefront attached to The Fidelity had forgotten to extinguish his coals, and the fumes had come up the air shaft. Since the guy who leased to the hot dog vendors was Mr. Mancini’s brother-in-law, the only thing to do about it was get dressed, listen to a wide-awake Mr. Mancini snarl preemptive disclaimers through the nasty smile that was already, even at 8:30 in the morning, plastered onto his face, and get out.
So I hit the streets a little more blearily than I might have liked, and this bleariness contributed, I have very little doubt, to the gradual nosedive my spirits took over the course of the morning. It wasn’t, at least not at first, that I no longer felt pretty fabulous about my late evening exertions with Tulip: I did. It’s just that part of my pleasure in contemplating the proceedings on Tulip’s AeroBed, proceedings that had lasted beyond any reasonable expectation, was mitigated by a sense of disbelief that gained ground as I sipped coffee on the bench outside Porto Rico on St. Mark’s Place, chewed a bagel I got on B, and read part of a Wolverine comic book I retrieved from a trash can on Seventh, and that was confirmed when I stood in front of a mirror in the men’s room in a café on Third and A.
Wait a minute, uck, there is no way Tulip did that voluntarily, is what I thought.
Now, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t made an effort since I had gotten into murders, despite the challenges presented by living at a dump like The Fidelity, to keep myself more or less presentable and to acquire some new clothing. In fact, at that very moment, I had on my favorite green rooster T-shirt, a pair of fairly clean, nicely rumpled linen pants, and some acceptable leather on my feet. But the truth was, even if it was possible that I was heading toward brighter days and a better look, I hadn’t gotten there yet. Not even close. I tried to imagine lasciviously sidling up to myself, failed, and had to splash water on my face. Fortunately, splashing water on my face made me think of Mr. Kindt and thinking of him, especially in this context, helped. Tulip did, after all, spend a tremendous amount of time around our benefactor, who, despite the odd feature or two, was, let’s face it, despite those special aspects, no gorgeous picture himself. I might, I thought, actually be just exactly what the doctor ordered for Tulip, just the perfect soup, the loveliest piece of pickled fish, the most extraordinary, because so unusually textured, chunk of baguette. I had, after all, enjoyed the company of a girlfriend who had loved me, or put up with me, for a very long time, and she had been far from some kind of kook or tasteless slouch. True, I had been in much better shape in those days, at least until that period at the end when it all collapsed, when it all came crashing down on me. Until that time I had without a doubt been what she once referred to, while we ate steak frites — my treat — at Belmondo, a “most satisfactory companion,” but still.
There were other things from the previous night to think about as I walked around that morning, little things — to do with Cornelius, and Mr. Kindt, and the nature of Tulip’s relationship to them — that, as you will see when I discuss the night of the murder later on, further problematized this question of the authenticity of Tulip’s regard for my physical person, and I did kick them around some, but mostly I considered, and mostly, in the end, fought off, doubts of a principally aesthetic nature.
Then I got hungry. The morning had closed up shop so I opted for a slice. Two Boots was, happily, just across the street when my stomach started grumbling. I sidestepped between a couple of parked Toyotas, let a few cabs shark their way by, and made for its welcoming doors.
Two Boots on Avenue A is one of those terrific spots that purists — partisans of Ray’s this and Ray’s that — turn their noses up at, but after too many years of getting burnt by the too-often mediocre results of tradition I had come to love it. At Two Boots, you can have your so-called plain slice with just the right amount of marinara and not too much cheese, or you can put your money down, as I like to, on one of the many slices with unusual names: The Night Tripper, Mel Cooley, Mr. Pink, Mrs. Peel, Big Maybelle, and so on. I had in mind a slice of Bayou Beast (shrimp, crawfish, andouille, jalapeño, and mozzarella), one of The Newman (Soppressata, sweet Italian sausage, ricotta, and mozzarella), a few shakes each of Parmesan, oregano, and hot pepper, a large, well-iced fountain Diet Pepsi, and a seat at the back booth by the john. I saw all of this as I crossed Avenue A, then felt and smelled and tasted it — for some reason the icy imagined Diet Pepsi coming up under my top lip as I sipped between imagined bites was particularly vivid — and, in short, worked myself into the kind of minor frenzy I began experiencing during my rougher days in the city whenever low blood sugar or whatever had kicked in and, money in pocket, I was minutes away from food.
Gratification was put off by a beleaguered-looking couple making the classic big production of getting out the front door with a stroller. I sort of theatrically stepped aside and swept my arm out to let them know that I wouldn’t be interfering, in any way whatsoever, with their forward baby-propelling propagation, and they both said thanks so simultaneously that I couldn’t help blurting “jinx.” This made the woman laugh and the guy smile. The baby, who had a lot of blond hair for such a shrimpy customer, let out a squawk, and they were off.
I only mention this because as I stood at the counter surveying the Pinks and Beasts and Big Maybelles, thinking that they ought to add a Mr. Kindt to their lineup, a kind of prestige slice with cracker crumbs and pickled herring on a white pie, two people said “I got it” at the same time, and a third voice, older, gravelly, accented, familiar, said “jinx.” Given that I never say “jinx” and that I haven’t heard it said in years, I turned to see who had spoken. But just then my order was taken and, because I occasionally frequented Two Boots and knew some of the guys there, a little chitchat was indicated, and by the time my slices were up and I had taken a spot not in the back, but in one of the big booths on Avenue, the “jinx” thing had slipped my mind. It came back to me though when the two “I got it” guys burst into conversation in the booth behind me about some book one of them was reading called Stranger Things Happen. Deep into the baked aquatic mysteries of my first bite of Bayou Beast, I half expected — in that bleary mind-fried way — the one who was reading it to start talking about Mr. Kindt or maybe the contortionists. Instead he went into a detailed description of a story about a ghost who can’t remember his name, which elicited a few too many guffaws from his companion for me to relax and enjoy my slices, so I moved to the table by the front door where, even though you have to stand and the foot traffic is pretty steady, the experience would be relatively untainted by over-easy joke-trued book talk.