“Ask him again.”
“He’s just going to leave you off the show for a while.”
“I ain’t taking no more insults from him.”
“Don’t be foolish. I talked with him. He’s not going to fire you, and that’s all there is to it.”
She’s really hyped, he thought. She sat up on the bed with her skirt over her knees. Her eyes blinked at him again.
“We talked it over. He said he would give you another chance. Why did you tell me you were through?”
He buttoned his shirt and laced his shoes and didn’t answer her. The pain in his head and body had lessened. The fingers of his right hand twitched as he tied his shoe string.
“Why did you tell me those things?” April said.
He left the room without putting on his coat or tie. He rang for the elevator and waited. It didn’t come. He heard April open the door of the room.
“Where are you going?” she said. “Come back and explain to me why you said Virdo fired you.”
He walked down the stairs to the lobby. He had to pause at the second flight and rest. The twitching in his fingers spread to the muscles of his arm. He walked two more flights and stopped again. He leaned against the wall and breathed hard. He felt his heart twist from the strain. Didn’t have no sleep, he thought. I’ll sleep this afternoon and let the whore fix me up. Makes a man right. Cleans the fatigue out of him. I need another piece like that blond slut back home. Should have gone to see her again before I left. He went down the last flight to the lobby and entered the bar.
The bartender was chipping up a block of ice in the cooler. The pick splintered a few pieces of ice on the floor. The bottles behind the bar were covered with a white sheet. There was no one else in the room save a Negro who was wiping off the tables with a rag. J.P. asked the bartender for a straight whiskey.
“I’m sorry, sir. It’s Sunday. We can’t serve drinks until after one o’clock.”
“Give me a bottle to go.”
“We can’t do that either, sir.”
He left the hotel and walked down the sidewalk in the sunshine to the cabstand. He rode out to Jerry’s Bar behind the depot with the hot summer wind blowing in his face through the car window. He ran his fingers along his jaw and felt the dried blood of the razor nicks flake off as he touched them. He looked down at his shirt. It was the same one he had taken off last night. There was a small drop of blood on the soiled collar. The cab drove through the train yard over the railroad tracks and stopped in front of the bar. The electric sign over the door with the shorted-out letters buzzed loudly. He paid the driver and went inside. Jerry was behind the bar.
“Good morning, Mr. Winfield,” he said. The bald spot in the center of his head shone dully in the light. He had an ingratiating mercantile manner that made J.P. want to spit. “What will you have?”
“A straight.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jerry put the jigger on the bar and filled it from a bottle that had a chrome spout fixed to the top. J.P. drank the bourbon neat and had the jigger filled again. The whiskey burned the inside of his stomach. He didn’t remember when he had last eaten.
“I want a girl for the afternoon,” he said.
“Talk to my wife. She takes care of all that.”
“Where is she?”
“Upstairs.”
J.P. started towards the back.
“Mr. Winfield, you didn’t pay for your drinks.”
He reached in his pocket for his wallet and found that he didn’t have it.
“Give me a blank check and a pen,” he said.
“We don’t cash checks as a rule, Mr. Winfield.”
“Don’t you think it’s good?”