Closing Time (Catch-22 2)

"Mr. Gaffney?"

"Forgive me. And Michael is just about finishing up and making ready to return, and you might forget."

"You see that too?"

"I see things too, Mr. Yossarian. That's also essential to my work. He's putting on his jacket and will soon be back with his first sketches of this new Milo Minderbinder wing. You'll permit Senor Gaffney that little wisecrack? I thought you might find it funnier than my first one."

"I'm grateful ... Jerry," said Yossarian, with no doubt left that he was finding Mr. Gaffney a jumbo pain in the ass. He kept to himself his temper of hostile sarcasm.

"Thank you ... John. I'm pleased we are friends now. You'll phone Nurse MacIntosh?"

"No fancy lingerie yet?" Melissa taunted when he did. "No Paris, or Florence?"

"Use your own for tonight," Yossarian bantered back. "We oug

ht to keep seeing how we get along before we take off on a trip. And bring your roommate, if she wants to come."

"You can call her Angela," Melissa told him tartly. "I know what you did with her. She told me all about you."

"That's too bad, I think," Yossarian said, taken somewhat aback. With these two, he saw, he must keep on his mettle. "For that matter," he charged, "she told me all about you. It must be a nightmare. You could enter a convent. Your antiseptic terrors are almost unbelievable."

"I don't care," Melissa said with a hint of fanatical resolution. "I work in a hospital and I see sick people. I'm not going to take chances anymore with herpes or AIDS or even chlamydia, or vaginitis or strep throat or any of those other things you men like to pass around. I know about diseases."

"Do what you want. But bring that other friend of yours. The one that works in the surgical recovery room. I might as well start getting friendly with her now."

"Wilma?"

"They call her angel, don't they, and honey?"

"Only when they're recovering."

"Then I will too. I want to look ahead."

BOOK

SIX

17

Sammy

Knee-action wheels.

I doubt I know more than a dozen people from the old days who might remember those automobile ads with the knee-action wheels, because I don't think there's more than a dozen of us left I could find. None live in Coney Island now, or even in Brooklyn. All that is gone, closed, except for the boardwalk and the beach and the ocean. We live in high-rise apartment houses like the one I'm in now, or in suburbs in traveling distance of Manhattan, like Lew and Claire, or in retirement villages in condominiums in West Palm Beach, Florida, like my brother and sister, or, if they have more money, in Boca Raton or Scottsdale, Arizona. Most of us have done much better than we ever thought we would or our parents dreamed we could.

Lifebuoy soap.

Halitosis.

Fleischmann's Yeast, for acne.

Ipana toothpaste for the smile of beauty, and Sal Hepatica for the smile of health.

When nature forgets, remember Ex-Lax.

Pepsi-Cola hits the spot

(When I drink it, how I fot).