“Terrible weather,” said Potter. “Anything to that regeneration story?”
“No, it was a frost, but I got a couple of columns out of it anyway. You look all right. I heard you’d broken your arm at Riga.”
“No, that was Merle,” said the man, motioning with his chin to a corner table, where a blonde young woman sat with one arm in a sling. She lifted her glass and smiled.
“Oh, too bad,” said the young man, returning the gesture.
“It’s all right. Makes her more manageable. Sometimes I wish they’d all break their arms, or legs, or something.”
A perspiring young man in black came by and clutched the Englishman’s arm. “Look here, Potter, do you know where I can find Johnny Ybarra?”
“No, no idea - have you tried the brothels?”
“All of them?” asked the sweating man despairingly over his shoulder as he hurried out. “Hello, Naumchik,” he added just before he disappeared.
Emile, who had been speaking into the hooded telephone at the end of the bar, looked up and raised his eyebrows. The young man nodded. Emile pressed a key, and the handset in front of the young man lighted up.
“Excuse me, Donald. Hello - oh, it’s you, Julia!”
The tiny face in the screen looked up at him with a smile. “How lucky to catch you, Martin! I called just on the chance of finding - Can you come for dinner?”
“Let me think. Yes - no, confound it, I’ve got to have dinner with Schenk. I’m sorry, Julia, I forgot.”
“It’s a pity. I’d love to see you, Martin.” She looked up at him wistfully.
“So would I. Maybe I could meet you somewhere tomorrow for cocktails …” The young man reflected that although Julia was a bit old for him, and he had no intention of starting that up all over again, still there was no getting around the fact that he had many pleasant memories of that little flat on the Heinrichstrasse, where he had written his first story on Julia’s little portable - “I Was Elektra’s Climbing Enigma,” by Martin Naumchik. How proud they had both been when they saw it printed in the paper! Everything since had stemmed from that … “How is Churchill?”
“I had to give him away, Martin. He was becoming so surly; he bit a good friend of mine. Too bad. But you still have Maggie?”
“Yes, Maggie is fine.”
Down the bar, three men in plastic surcoats were tossing coins into a metal tub which stood before a stereo of a plump young woman in Bavarian peasant costume. Each time a coin fell into the tub, the girl turned slowly around and lifted her skirts, displaying her bare bottom; each time this happened, the three men burst into roars of coarse laughter.
Potter touched him on the shoulder and mouthed, “Goodby;” the young man turned, waved.
“Well, Martin, do call me if you can.”
“Yes, I’ll do that. Tomorrow, sometime in the afternoon. You’re still at the Ministry?”
“Still there.”
“Fine, I’ll call you. Good-by.” The pathetic face in the telephone screen winked out. Sighing with regret and relief, the young man replaced the handset.
A PLUMP young man in a brown jacket took Potter’s place at the bar. He had a bristly, unkempt mustache and protruding blue eyes, and somehow managed to look both innocent and dissolute.
“Hello, Naumchik.”
“Hello, Wallenstein.”
The plump man signaled to the bartender. “Emile, a Black Wednesday. Listen, Naumchik, you may be just the man I want. You know Kohler, the fellow who runs that string of provincial weeklies?”
“Yes, what about him?”
“Well, it’s ridiculous - I owe the man a favor - I promised I’d cover that Zoo story for him tomorrow. Then what should happen, but UPI offers me a plush assignment in Oslo. Two months, all expenses, best hotels. Well, I mean to say! But I’ve got to leave in the morning or it’s no go. You wouldn’t mind, would you, Naumchik - take you just half an hour - I’d even throw in a bit out of my own pocket.”
“Hold on a minute, I’ve lost you. What Zoo story?”
“Oh, one of their bipeds has given birth, and Kohler wants to play it up for the farm audience. What do you say?”
“Well, I suppose there’s no reason -” the young man began, then suddenly stopped. What a curious sensation! Out of the depths of his memory floated the picture of a two-legged creature scrabbling against the glass wall of a cage, while he, outside in the cold air, looked with amazement at his pink, five-fingered hands. How odd. It was the first time in months he had even thought of it.
“Well? It’s agreed?”
“No, on second thought, I don’t believe it would be advisable,” said the young man.
“Not advisable? What do you mean? Come on, old fellow, I’ll put in ten of my own on top of Kohler’s twenty - now how’s that?”
Naumchik drained his glass quickly, set it down. “No, I’m sorry, he said. “I’ve just remembered, I’ve got to be somewhere else tomorrow.” He clapped the plump young man on the back. “Well, you’ll find someone, I’m sure. So long, Wallenstein.”
The plump man pouted at him. “Well, then, if you want to be a bastard.”
“I do,” said Martin Naumchik cheerfully. “Aren’t we all? Keep it clean, old man.” He walked out, whistling. On the threshold he paused to breathe deep. The snow had stopped. The stars were crystal bright over the roof tops.