He felt better now, thank you.
How language is webbed in the senses. Out of sand-blaze brilliance into quirky minds such as his, into touch, taste and fragrance. He thought he'd linger just a bit longer, let the bath take total hold, ease and alleviate, before he put on clothes and entered the complex boxes where people do their living.
Nothing fits the body so well as water.
Later they would go get the car but first they hung around a while, letting the night close in, sitting on the stoop in front of 611.
Juju did not sit down until he spread his hanky on the steps. He was talking about the new model cars, just out, this one's got the horsepower, that one's got the handling, and he was earnest and fervent.
"You talk like you're ready to whip out your wallet," Nick said. "When you know and I know."
Scarfo stood on the corner about ten yards away eating a jelly apple, a grown man, holding it away from his body and leaning in to bite.
"There's nothing in there but a rubber."
They watched people come home from work. Nick sat haunched on the iron rail just above Juju. It was cold and they came plugging home, clerks, bus drivers, garment workers, elevator operators.
Nick watched them and smoked.
"That's you," he said.
"What are you talking?"
"Two years tops. That's you," he said. "Could happen sooner."
"It's a job. They have jobs. What do you want them to do?"
"I'll tell you what I think."
"Save me a drag on that cigarette."
They watched Scarfo talking to the shoemaker, holding the jelly apple at arm's length now.
"Anything's better than what they're doing. That's what I think."
"They're working. Let them work."
Nick watched and smoked, secretaries, maintenance men, bank tellers, messengers, typists in the typing pool, stenographers in the steno pool.
"It's not the work. It's the regular hours," Nick said. "Going in the same time every day. Clocking in, taking the train. It's the train. Going in together. Coming home together."
"You're better than that."
"I'm better, I'm worse, what's the difference."
When Nick took the last drag on the cigarette he held the butt with his thumb and middle finger, the middle finger poised to flick so that he took the drag and flicked in one prolonged motion, sending the butt toward the curbstone.
"Thanks," Juju said.
"For what?"
"You rather collect twenty weeks a year than have a steady job that pays decent?"
"I tell you what I rather do. I rather get my dick sucked by the one in the green coat."
"Where?"
"The one in the green coat."
"Where?"
"Across the street," Nick said.
"You like that?"
"Hey. I didn't say I want to marry her."
"You couldn't save me a drag?"
"What? Did you ask?"
"She's awful short," Juju said.
"Good. She can blow me standing up."
"Save wear and tear on her knees."
"God makes short people for a reason."
Scarfo wore neat creased pants and good shoes and he ate with his body contorted to keep the jelly from dripping on his clothes. He was talking to the shoemaker about something and the shoemaker stood there squat-bodied and blank.
"You got gas money?" Juju said.
"We don't need gas. For where we're going?"
"Where are we going?"
"To the poolroom," Nick said.
They watched the shoemaker think. Like watching a bulldog take a crap.
The people came home from work, thinning out over time, the merest scatter now. It was the night before Thanksgiving and there was a thing you were supposed to feel about a holiday and a day off and getting ready for the big feast with the relatives coming over but Nicky's days off had started a couple of weeks earlier when he stopped going to school and there weren't any relatives nearby which was something, in fact, to be thankful for.
He tapped Juju on the shoulder. They walked over to Quarry Road, a stretch of weedy landscape traveled mainly by dog walkers. This was where the '46 Chevy waited at the base of the high stone wall that surrounded the hospital for the incurable.
They were too young to have drivers' licenses but it didn't matter because the car was stolen anyway.
They'd seen it parked near the zoo about three weeks ago, key in the ignition, near nightfall, and Nick had gotten in, an impulse, a thing you don't even have time to dare yourself to do, and he started up the engine. Juju watched for a second and got in. Vito was with them, Bats, and he got in. They drove around for much of the night and it was still a joke, an escapade, and they chipped in for gas and drove around some more and then left the car parked next to an empty lot, with Nick taking the keys, and it was still there the next day They got a set of plates from Vito's uncle's car that was in traction, more or less, for the winter, and they exchanged these for the original plates and drove mainly at night because the brashness had given way to a responsible sense of ownership and they went only limited distances because it seemed safer and they didn't have money to spend on gas and there was nowhere to go anyway.
Juju started the car up and they sat there listening to it throb.
"You see what you're doing to this mat," Nick said. "Only three weeks it's been. You're wearing it out. You're wearing down the ridges with your feet. You and her. Use the backseat, animal."
"The backseat's cramped."
"Animate."
"It's roomier up here."
Juju and his girlfriend shared the front seat for hours at a time, Gloria, french-kissing into the night, the young man's hands exploratory, but it was the action of their feet that caused the trouble, it was the grinding of their feet in unavailing passion that was destroying the traction on the mat.
"Explain to her that if she puts put, Gloria, in a polite way, tell her, the damage to the car will be reduced in the long run. You won't have all this frustration that the both of you take out on the furniture."
"The furniture."
"Put out or stay out. Tell her nice-nice. Because we can't afford this girl destroying our property."
Juju put the car in gear and drove the two blocks to the poolroom, parking away from the streetlight. They got out, examined the car and then crossed the street and went up the long flight of steel-tipped stairs and through the tall metal door into the sparse smoke of the big room, where a single dim figure was hunched over a table, cue ball spinning in the gloom.
A woman rapped a penny on the window and Klara looked up. The woman waved, missus somebody, and Klara smiled and hurried on. She had company coming and she was late.
She stopped for some things at the grocer's and then went up the front steps and there was Albert's mother in the window, cranked-up, wearing a white hospital gown and facing straight out, with a religious medal dangling, and she looked a little like a vision or someone waiting for a vision.
Klara did not want to give this striking scene a title out of some Renaissance gallery because that would be unkind. But the fact, after all, was that the woman was on display.
Mrs. Ketchel sat with Albert's mother this afternoon. The child was being minded by a girl in the building who was capable and trustworthy.
Klara tidied the place a little, not much, and then stood in the spare room looking at the sketch on the easel, a study of the room itself. She'd been sketching the room for some time now. She did studies of the door frame, the molding on the walls, she did the luggage stacked in a corner.