laugh in its teeth somewhere.” I put a foot outside and stuck one of my cards on top of the visor. “If you ever have a keyhole that needs looking through.”
He was watching me with his hands still on the wheel. “We went together kind of smooth in there. Where were you ten years ago?”
“Protecting my best side in a Cambodian jungle.”
“Yeah? Korea here.”
“Same war,” I said. “Different people. Good night, Sergeant.”
“That’s Mister. But good night anyway.”
In ten minutes I was home. Just three rooms, a garage, and a dandelion patch with some grass in it, but the surrounding houses were still standing with lights on and when you woke up in the morning it was to the sound of the neighbor’s power mower or the Doberman down the block yapping its head off at a lost hubcap on the front lawn and not a two-ton ball punching holes in the brick house across the street. So far General Motors hadn’t whistled at the mayor and pointed my way.
There was nothing in the mailbox but a religious pamphlet. I had had enough of religion that evening. I left it for seed and let myself in. The place needed dusting, but not as badly as Stash Leposava’s. I determined to do something about it before it did. I hung up my hat and climbed out of my jacket and necktie, wound the clock my grandfather bought for his mother, went into the kitchen and got a tray out of the freezing compartment of the refrigerator and ran some water on it in the sink. Scrod, with a side of corn and little round potatoes the size of marbles in compartments like you see in a cash box. I hate scrod, but it had been on sale and I had four more trays of it. There was a time when I cooked, really cooked, but it seemed like a lot of trouble to go to for just me.
I took down a bottle of Scotch three-quarters full, or one-quarter empty, from the cabinet over the sink and wet a glass from it and cut it with water. While waiting for the hoarfrost to melt off the TV dinner I looked at my reflection in the night-backed window and wondered how I would look with a white moustache.
When the scrod was in the oven I took my glass and went back into the living room and sat down and looked at the dust on the blank television screen.
People move all the time. They can’t find work at home and go where the jobs are, they get transferred, they grow tired of shoveling snow in April and go west or south, they get sick of waking up every morning to the same face on the next pillow, they go to find themselves, they go to lose themselves, wives run to Bermuda with exterminators, husbands head for Vegas with little blonde numbers from the secretarial pool, kids light out for anywhere not home with just their thumbs and a nylon backpack with something by Kerouac in it. Mommy’s gone away, son. No, Daddy doesn’t know when she’ll be back. Eat your cauliflower. What was he wearing when he left, lady? I can’t understand it, Dad. He’s never been away this long without calling. She was an A student until she met this boy, Officer. Jim, Brian’s an hour late getting home from school and I’m worried sick.
Sometimes they get snatched and then you wait for the call from someone talking through a handkerchief, telling you where to bring the cash or from a cop asking you to come downtown and take a look at what they found jammed into a culvert in Redford Township. Sometimes they go into hiding and then you have to work backwards to find out why. Sometimes they just move and forget to leave a forwarding address. Those are the hardest, because people forget a lot more thoroughly than they cover up.
You get a cramp filling out duplicate driver’s license application forms and wear your tongue out licking stamps, you bribe postal clerks to go into the basement and rummage through the obsolete change-of-addresses for information that’s supposed to be free to the public, you ruin your eyes reading old personals on microfilm at the library, you say sir and ma’am to
He was watching me with his hands still on the wheel. “We went together kind of smooth in there. Where were you ten years ago?”
“Protecting my best side in a Cambodian jungle.”
“Yeah? Korea here.”
“Same war,” I said. “Different people. Good night, Sergeant.”
“That’s Mister. But good night anyway.”
In ten minutes I was home. Just three rooms, a garage, and a dandelion patch with some grass in it, but the surrounding houses were still standing with lights on and when you woke up in the morning it was to the sound of the neighbor’s power mower or the Doberman down the block yapping its head off at a lost hubcap on the front lawn and not a two-ton ball punching holes in the brick house across the street. So far General Motors hadn’t whistled at the mayor and pointed my way.
There was nothing in the mailbox but a religious pamphlet. I had had enough of religion that evening. I left it for seed and let myself in. The place needed dusting, but not as badly as Stash Leposava’s. I determined to do something about it before it did. I hung up my hat and climbed out of my jacket and necktie, wound the clock my grandfather bought for his mother, went into the kitchen and got a tray out of the freezing compartment of the refrigerator and ran some water on it in the sink. Scrod, with a side of corn and little round potatoes the size of marbles in compartments like you see in a cash box. I hate scrod, but it had been on sale and I had four more trays of it. There was a time when I cooked, really cooked, but it seemed like a lot of trouble to go to for just me.
I took down a bottle of Scotch three-quarters full, or one-quarter empty, from the cabinet over the sink and wet a glass from it and cut it with water. While waiting for the hoarfrost to melt off the TV dinner I looked at my reflection in the night-backed window and wondered how I would look with a white moustache.
When the scrod was in the oven I took my glass and went back into the living room and sat down and looked at the dust on the blank television screen.
People move all the time. They can’t find work at home and go where the jobs are, they get transferred, they grow tired of shoveling snow in April and go west or south, they get sick of waking up every morning to the same face on the next pillow, they go to find themselves, they go to lose themselves, wives run to Bermuda with exterminators, husbands head for Vegas with little blonde numbers from the secretarial pool, kids light out for anywhere not home with just their thumbs and a nylon backpack with something by Kerouac in it. Mommy’s gone away, son. No, Daddy doesn’t know when she’ll be back. Eat your cauliflower. What was he wearing when he left, lady? I can’t understand it, Dad. He’s never been away this long without calling. She was an A student until she met this boy, Officer. Jim, Brian’s an hour late getting home from school and I’m worried sick.
Sometimes they get snatched and then you wait for the call from someone talking through a handkerchief, telling you where to bring the cash or from a cop asking you to come downtown and take a look at what they found jammed into a culvert in Redford Township. Sometimes they go into hiding and then you have to work backwards to find out why. Sometimes they just move and forget to leave a forwarding address. Those are the hardest, because people forget a lot more thoroughly than they cover up.
You get a cramp filling out duplicate driver’s license application forms and wear your tongue out licking stamps, you bribe postal clerks to go into the basement and rummage through the obsolete change-of-addresses for information that’s supposed to be free to the public, you ruin your eyes reading old personals on microfilm at the library, you say sir and ma’am to
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