"No problem," she said, and scooped up the bill.
"Four bucks of that is mine," Larry said, and held out his hand. Sheryl made a face, but she gave him the twenty, and watched him as he walked down to the cash register to make change.
"So where you from, Bobby?" she asked.
"Most recently? Chicago. Before that, Kansas City."
Playing it recklessly. Those were the two cities exactly. But that's what made this so exciting. Playing the game for the ultimate risk.
Larry was back with her change. "Here's your sixteen," he said, handing her three fives and a single.
"You take out a fourteen-inch whanger in here," she said, "Larry'll want twenty percent of it."
"I never yet seen nobody with a fourteen-incher," Larry said.
"You been looking?" she asked, and winked at Bobby and put the bills into her handbag. "What Larry does, he checks out the men's room for fourteen-inchers."
"This soldier is in the men's room taking a shower," Bobby said. "All the other guys in his company…"
"Is this another one?" Larry said.
"I thought I told you not to interrupt my stories," Bobby said.
"Stories like yours…"
"Be quiet," he said.
He spoke the words very softly.
Larry looked at him.
"Do you understand?" he said. "When I'm telling a story, be quiet."
Larry looked into his eyes.
Then he shrugged and walked to the other end of the bar.
"Serves him right," Sheryl said. "Let me hear the story, Bobby."
"This soldier is taking a shower. All the other guys in his company are crowded around the stall, looking in at him, craning for a look at him. That's because the guy has a penis that's only an inch long. Finally, the guy can't take it anymore. He turns to them and yells, 'What's the matter? You never seen anybody with a hard-on before?' "
Sheryl burst out laughing again.
From the other end of the bar, Larry grimaced sourly, and said, "Very funny."
"So which one are you, Bobby?" Sheryl asked. "The fourteen-incher or the inch-long wonder?"
"I thought we weren't going to hurry," he said.
"Listen, it's your money," Sheryl said. "Take all the time you need."
"I mean, I thought we were having fun here," he said.
"We are," she said.
"I mean, isn't this fun?"
"I love your stories, Bobby," she said.
"You're a fun girl," he said. "I can tell that."
"That's what I've been told, Bobby."
"I mean, I'll bet you like to do new and exciting things, don't you?"
"Oh, sure," she said. "I even did it with a police dog once."
"That's not what I meant. I meant new things. Exciting things.'
"Well, to me that was new. Six guys watching while I did it with a police dog? That was new."
"It may have been new, but I'll bet it wasn't exciting," Bobby said.
"Well, I have to admit, when the dog went down on me that was sort of exciting. He had like this very raspy tongue, you know? Like sandpaper. I guess you could say that was sort of exciting. I mean, once you got past the idea of him being a dog, which was disgusting, of course."
"Sheryl," he said, "I think you're terrific, I really do. We're going to have a lot of fun together, you'll see."
"Oh, I'm sure."
"We're going to do some new and very exciting things."
"I can hardly wait," she said.
"Lots of laughs," he said.
"I already find you very funny," she said.
"This midget goes into a men's room," he said. "And there's a guy standing there at one of the…"
This second party was even better than the first one had been.
Parker was having the time of his life.
At the first party, he'd got drunk enough to believe he was really a writer passing himself off as a cop who only wanted to be a writer. At this party, he didn't tell anyone he was a cop because no one was in costume here, it wasn't that kind of a party. But even without the masquerade, he was having a marvelous time. Maybe because there were all sorts of interesting people here, most of them women. Or maybe because these interesting women all found him interesting.
This was very amazing to him.
He thought he was just being his usual shitty self.
It turned out that the woman whose apartment they were in was celebrating her sixty-third birthday tonight, which was why there was a party in the first place, never mind Halloween. Her name was Sandra, and she was the one Peaches had been expecting a call from earlier tonight, which was the only reason she'd answered the phone after that heavy-breathing creep got off the line. Sandra was her next-to-best friend; her best friend was the woman who'd thrown the costume party. Still, Peaches liked Sandra a lot, especially because she never expected a present on her birthday. She was a bit surprised, therefore, and somewhat annoyed, when Parker flatly and rudely expressed the opinion that no one over the age of sixty should be asked to blow out all the candles on a birthday cake in a single breath. And she was even more surprised when Sandra burst out laughing and said, "Oh, baby, how true! Who the hell needs such a humiliating stress test?"
Everyone laughed. Even Peaches.
Sandra then blew out all the candles in a single breath, and pinched Parker on the behind and asked him if he'd like the candles on his cake blown. "Out," she added.
Everyone laughed. Except Peaches.
A little later on, encouraged by the attention a lot of these very interesting women were paying to ideas he'd never even known he'd had, Parker ventured a bit closer to home and suggested to a lady trial lawyer that anyone committing a murder was at least a little bit crazy and that therefore the "legal insanity" defense was meaningless. The lady lawyer said, "That's very interesting, Andy. I had a case last week where…"
It was astonishing.
Parker said to a woman wearing horn-rimmed eyeglasses and no bra that he found pornographic movies more honest than any of the nighttime soaps on television, and the woman turned out to be a film critic who encouraged him to expand upon the idea.
Parker told a woman writer—a real writer—that he never spent more than five pages with any book if he wasn't hooked by then, and the woman expounded upon the importance of a book's opening and closing paragraphs, to which Parker said, "Sure, it's like foreplay and afterplay," and the woman writer put her hand on his arm and laughed robustly, which Peaches did not find at all amusing.
Peaches, in fact, was becoming more and more irritated by the fact that Sandra had invited her to a party where the women outnumbered the men by an approximate two-to-one and where Parker was suddenly the center of all this female attention. She had liked it better when they were a couple pretending to be a cop and a victim. They were sharing something then. Now Parker seemed to be stepping out on his own, the small-time flamenco dancer who'd been offered a movie contract provided he ditched his fat lady partner. This miffed Peaches because for Christ's sake she was the one who'd introduced him to show biz in the first place!
When the female midget walked in at twenty-five minutes to twelve, Peaches immediately checked out the man with her. Burly guy going a bit bald, but with a pleasant craggy face, and a seemingly gentle manner. Five-ten or -eleven, she guessed, merry blue eyes, nice speaking voice now that she heard him wishing Sandra a happy birthday. Sandra took their coats and wandered off, muttering something about mingling. Peaches moved in fast before the other sharks smelled blood on the water. She introduced herself to the man and the midget—
"Hi, I'm Peaches Muldoon."
"Quentin Forbes. Alice…"
—and then took the man's arm before he could finish the midget's name, and said, "Come on, I'll get you a drink," and sailed off with him, leaving the midget standing there by the door looking forlornly and shyly into the room.