HE SLEPT, WOKE UP, and went out and ate something at a counter, where the Marine type in the paper hat who took his order kept watching him out of the corner of his eye as he griddled the pancakes. Rick caught his reflection, unshaven and still wearing the shirt he’d put on the day before, in the chrome steel of a Bunn coffee maker behind the counter and sympathized. Back at the apartment he turned on the TV without turning up the sound and watched the Porter Parade all over again. Then Captain Kangaroo came on and he switched off the set. He had another drink just to maintain his buzz, then slept again. He woke up again in the afternoon and had another. In the evening when he woke up he felt like doing something.
“Hello?”
The voice in the earpiece sounded foggy.
“Dan, this is Rick.”
“Rick. Jesus Christ, what time is it?”
Outside it was dark and he had left the lamps off, but the face of the shelf clock was visible in the flicker from the wastebasket. “A little after eleven. Did I wake you up?”
“That four a.m. shift’s a pain in the butt.” Sugar sounded wide awake now. “You get them? You get the letters?”
“Letters, who writes letters any more? It’s a lost art, like undercover work in the age of listening devices.”
“You drunk?”
He introduced water to the ouzo. The glass reflected the orangish, wobbling illumination that was growing now, making shadows writhe on the walls and ceiling.
“Have drunk,” Rick corrected. “Pluperfect tense. The following is a list of words that require helpers: drunk, swung, hung, dung—help me out here… .”
“You are drunk.”
“Spifflicated.”
“What?”
“My mother’s word. She used it when she chewed out my father so I wouldn’t understand. They sold the stuff out of cars in front of Dodge Main and he never got past them walking a straight line. Spifflicated, I just remembered. Haven’t thought of it in thirty years.”
“You’re celebrating, right? You got them.”
“Got what?”
“The letters! Dear Love-buggy, your Wendy-poo misses oo. How many you got? They really hot?”
“Oh, yeah, they’re hot.” The next sip cleared his fog. “Listen, Dan—”
“Anything we can quote in the papers? We can use what-chacallum, asterisks for the really hot parts. That always makes ’em seem worse. Bring them over. No, better stay there. Where are you, your place? I’ll be there in twenty.”
“I don’t have them, Dan. She burned them.”
“She what? Who’s she?”
“Enid. The Kohler woman. She burned them in her fireplace, every last one. Months ago.”
“Bullshit. Broads don’t destroy that kind of thing. My wife still has her wedding corsage and we ain’t talked to each other in a year. You toss the place?”
“They’re gone, Dan.”
During the pause on Sugar’s end, Rick leaned across the arm of his chair and slid the window up another few inches. The air in the room was getting hazy.
Sugar blew out. “Okay, we ain’t dead, just crippled a little. Make her a deal. She want to be famous? ‘Muckraker’s Mistress Tells All,’ we’ll get her on magazine covers, TV. It could lead to a movie deal like that Keeler cunt. Tell her there’s a couple of grand in it for her besides. No, shit, make it ten, we ain’t cheap. They do anything, you know, kinky? Don’t matter. We’ll take her picture with a schnauzer. No kidding, I’m getting into this.”
“I quit.”
“Stop clowning around. We got work to do.”
“I quit is what I said. Tell Fred Donner to stick it up his tailpipe. I’m hanging up my cloak and dagger. Don’t bother with severance pay or references.”
“Listen, we’ll talk about this when you’re not cockeyed. I had a nickel for every time I got a snootful and decided to tell the boss what I thought of him—”
“So long, Dan.”
“Wait! What you going to do to eat?”
“I’ve still got my wrenches.”
“You ain’t got shit. The title on that Camaro? It’s a fake. The car belongs to General Motors security. Answer the door, chump. That’s the repo man knocking.”
“He’ll find the keys in the ignition. I’ve got enough put away for a used Buick I saw advertised in the News.”
“That’d kill you.”
“It won’t, but the Camaro might have. A car’s just something to get you around, hopefully in one piece.”
“You motherfu—”
The flames in the metal wastebasket were dying down now. After Rick hung up on Sugar he got a long-handled cooking fork from the little kitchen and stirred the ashes until the unburned portion of the letters caught fire, then doused the sparks with water from the pitcher. Black smoke boiled out and found its way to the window.
A few minutes later the landlady from downstairs tapped at his door and asked him apologetically to use the ventilator fan when he cooked.