The Cat's Pajamas

You watch Anne, at a corner table, in a monk’s cloth sport dress, interwoven with gold and silver thread, a link of Aztec jewelry in bronze units around her tan neck. Her hair is the same bronze color. Beside her, behind a cigar and a haze of smoke, is the rather tall, spare figure of Michael Horn, who looks just like what he is, gambler, narcotics specialist, sensualist par excellence, lover of women, ruler of men, wearer of diamonds and silk undershorts. You would not want to shake hands with him. That manicure looks too sharp.

You sit down to a salad. You are eating it when Anne and Mike come by the table, after their cocktail. “Hello, sharpster,” you say to Mike Horn, with a little emphasis on the latter word.

Behind Horn is his bodyguard, a young twenty-two-year-old kid from Chicago named Berntz, with a carnation in his black coat lapel and his black hair greased, and his eyes sewed down by little muscles at the corners, so he looks sad.

“Hello, Rob, darling,” says Anne. “How’s the book?”

“Fine, fine. I’ve got a swell new chapter on you, Anne.”

“Thank you, darling.”

“When you going to leave this big heel-headed leprechaun?” you ask her, not looking at Mike.

“After I kill him,” says Anne.

Mike laughs. “That’s a good one. Now let’s get going, baby. I’m tired of this jerk.”

You upset some cutlery. Somehow a lot of dishes fall. You almost hit Mike. But Berntz and Anne and Jerry gang up on you and so you sit down, the blood banging your ears, and people pick up the cutlery and hand it to you.

“So long,” says Mike.

Anne goes out the door like a pendulum on a clock and you note the time. Mike and Berntz follow.

You look at your salad. You reach for your fork. You pick at the stuff.

You take a forkful.

Jerry stares at you. “For God’s sake, Rob, what’s wrong?”

You don’t speak. You take the fork away from your lips.

“What’s wrong, Rob? Spit it out!”

You spit.

Jerry swears under his breath.

Blood.

You and Jerry come down out of the Taft building and you are now talking sign language. A wad of stuff is in your mouth. You smell of antiseptic.

“But I don’t see how,” said Jerry. You gesture with your hands. “Yeah, I know, the fight in the Derby. The fork gets knocked on the floor.” You gesture again. Jerry supplies the explanation to the pantomime. “Mike, or Berntz, picks it up, hands it back to you, but instead slips you a fixed, sharpened fork.”

You nod your head, violently, flushing.

“Or maybe it was Anne,” says Jerry.

No, you shake your head. You try to explain in pantomime that if Anne knew about this she’d quit Mike cold. Jerry doesn’t get it and peers at you through his thick goggles. You sweat.

A tongue is a bad place for a cut. You knew a guy once who had a cut tongue and the wound never healed, even though it stopped bleeding. And imagine with a hemophiliac!

You gesture now, forcing a smile as you climb into your car. Jerry squints, thinks, gets it. “Oh.” He laughs. “You mean to say, all you need now is a stab in the backside?”

You nod, shake hands, drive off.

Suddenly, life is not so funny anymore. Life is real. Life is stuff that comes out of your veins at the least invitation. Unconsciously, your hand goes again and again to your coat pocket where the tablets are hidden. Good old tablets.

It is about now you notice you are being followed.