said. "It can stir dull roots; it can rip them up, wash them away. I will think of you boys as I bask in the sun down in N'Orleans, up here up to your ass in water."
"So go," Picnic said, "go already."
"By the way," Rizzo said, "Pierce wanted you yesterday but I gave him some crap about finding a part for the TCC. It took me a while though to figure out where it was you'd gone." "Christ, let me in on it," Levine said quietly. "I'm still trying to figure it out," Rizzo grinned. "See you guys," Levine said. He bummed a ride off a deuce-and-a-half that was heading back to Roach. A couple of miles out of town the PFC who was driving said, "Damn, it'll almost be a relief to get back."
"Back?" Levine said. "Oh, yeah, I guess so." He watched the windshield wipers pushing the rain away, listened to the rain slashing on the roof. After a while he fell asleep.
LOW-LANDS
AT HALF past five in the afternoon Dennis Flange was still entertaining the garbage man. The garbage man's name was Rocco Squarcione, and around nine that morning, directly after finishing his route, he had arrived at the Flange residence with an orange peel still clinging to his dungaree shirt and a gallon of homemade muscatel dangling from a large fist speckled with coffee grounds. "Hey sfacim '," he bellowed from the living room. "I got wine. Come on down."
"Fine," Flange yelled back, deciding not to go to work after all. He called up Wasp and Winsome, Attorneys at Law, and got somebody's secretary. "Flange," he said: "no." She began to object. "Later," he said, hung up and sat with Rocco for the rest of the day drinking muscatel and listening to a $1,000 stereo outfit that Cindy had made him buy but which she had never used, to Flange's recollection, for anything but a place to put hors d'oeuvre dishes or cocktail trays. Cindy was Mrs. Flange and needless to say she did not dig this muscatel business. She did not dig Rocco Squarcione either. Or as a matter of fact any of her husband's friends. "You keep that weird crew down in the rumpus room," she would yell, brandishing a cocktail shaker. "You are a damned ASPCA, is what you are. I doubt if even they would take some of the animals you bring home." What Flange should have answered but didn't was something like, "Rocco Squarcione is not an animal, he is a garbage man with a fondness, among other things, for Vivaldi." It was Vivaldi they were listening to now, Sixth Concerto for Violin, subtitled Il Piacere , while Cindy stomped around upstairs. Flange got the impression she was throwing things. He wondered every once in a while what life would be like without a second story and how it was people managed to get along in ranch-style or split-level houses without running amok once a year or so. The Flange abode perched on a cliff overlooking the Sound. It had been built vaguely to resemble an English cottage back in the '20's by an Episcopal minister who ran bootleg stuff in from Canada on the side. It seemed everyone living on the north shore of Long Island at the time was engaged in some kind of smuggling, because there are all kinds of little spits and bays, necks and inlets which the Feds still have no idea exist. The minister must have taken a romantic attitude toward the whole business: the house rose in a big mossy tumulus out of the earth, its color that of one of the shaggier prehistoric beasts. Inside were priest-holes and concealed passageways and oddly angled rooms; and in the cellar, leading from the rumpus room, innumerable tunnels, which writhed away radically like the tentacles of a spastic octopus into dead ends, storm drains, abandoned sewers and occasionally a secret wine cellar. Dennis and Cindy Flange had lived in this curious moss-thatched, almost organic mound for the seven years of their marriage and in this time Flange at least had come to feel attached to the place by an umbilical cord woven of lichen and sedge, furze and gorse; he called it his womb with a view and in their now
"So go," Picnic said, "go already."
"By the way," Rizzo said, "Pierce wanted you yesterday but I gave him some crap about finding a part for the TCC. It took me a while though to figure out where it was you'd gone." "Christ, let me in on it," Levine said quietly. "I'm still trying to figure it out," Rizzo grinned. "See you guys," Levine said. He bummed a ride off a deuce-and-a-half that was heading back to Roach. A couple of miles out of town the PFC who was driving said, "Damn, it'll almost be a relief to get back."
"Back?" Levine said. "Oh, yeah, I guess so." He watched the windshield wipers pushing the rain away, listened to the rain slashing on the roof. After a while he fell asleep.
LOW-LANDS
AT HALF past five in the afternoon Dennis Flange was still entertaining the garbage man. The garbage man's name was Rocco Squarcione, and around nine that morning, directly after finishing his route, he had arrived at the Flange residence with an orange peel still clinging to his dungaree shirt and a gallon of homemade muscatel dangling from a large fist speckled with coffee grounds. "Hey sfacim '," he bellowed from the living room. "I got wine. Come on down."
"Fine," Flange yelled back, deciding not to go to work after all. He called up Wasp and Winsome, Attorneys at Law, and got somebody's secretary. "Flange," he said: "no." She began to object. "Later," he said, hung up and sat with Rocco for the rest of the day drinking muscatel and listening to a $1,000 stereo outfit that Cindy had made him buy but which she had never used, to Flange's recollection, for anything but a place to put hors d'oeuvre dishes or cocktail trays. Cindy was Mrs. Flange and needless to say she did not dig this muscatel business. She did not dig Rocco Squarcione either. Or as a matter of fact any of her husband's friends. "You keep that weird crew down in the rumpus room," she would yell, brandishing a cocktail shaker. "You are a damned ASPCA, is what you are. I doubt if even they would take some of the animals you bring home." What Flange should have answered but didn't was something like, "Rocco Squarcione is not an animal, he is a garbage man with a fondness, among other things, for Vivaldi." It was Vivaldi they were listening to now, Sixth Concerto for Violin, subtitled Il Piacere , while Cindy stomped around upstairs. Flange got the impression she was throwing things. He wondered every once in a while what life would be like without a second story and how it was people managed to get along in ranch-style or split-level houses without running amok once a year or so. The Flange abode perched on a cliff overlooking the Sound. It had been built vaguely to resemble an English cottage back in the '20's by an Episcopal minister who ran bootleg stuff in from Canada on the side. It seemed everyone living on the north shore of Long Island at the time was engaged in some kind of smuggling, because there are all kinds of little spits and bays, necks and inlets which the Feds still have no idea exist. The minister must have taken a romantic attitude toward the whole business: the house rose in a big mossy tumulus out of the earth, its color that of one of the shaggier prehistoric beasts. Inside were priest-holes and concealed passageways and oddly angled rooms; and in the cellar, leading from the rumpus room, innumerable tunnels, which writhed away radically like the tentacles of a spastic octopus into dead ends, storm drains, abandoned sewers and occasionally a secret wine cellar. Dennis and Cindy Flange had lived in this curious moss-thatched, almost organic mound for the seven years of their marriage and in this time Flange at least had come to feel attached to the place by an umbilical cord woven of lichen and sedge, furze and gorse; he called it his womb with a view and in their now
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