'God, I hope so,' said Arnold Mulcahy.
Bogus followed Wilson out of the hotel and into a battered car. Wilson set the suitcase heavily in Bogus's lap.
Trumper rode in silence to Greenwich Village, but Wilson swore and gestured at every odd-looking, queerly dressed person he saw on the crowded sidewalks. 'You're going to fit right in here, you fucking freak,' he told Trumper. He swerved to avoid a tall black girl walking two handsome dogs and yelled out the window at her, 'Eat me!'
Bogus tried to hang on just a little longer. A vision of Ralph Packer as savior; an odd role for Ralph, but then he saw Packer on a bicycle, crossing the Iowa River.
'Well, here we are, hair-pie,' Wilson said.
One hundred nine Christopher Street was lit. There was still hope in the world. Bogus noted it was a quiet street with daytime shops, a luncheonette, a spice store, a tailor. But apparently it linked more night-traveled areas; lots of people were walking through it without stopping.
'You missing anything?' Wilson asked him. Bogus felt for the money envelope; yes, he had it, and he was holding his suitcase in his lap. But when he looked puzzled, he saw that Wilson was holding the crinkled-up thing that Dante Calicchio had taken out of his crotch. Bogus remembered then that it was a hundred-dollar bill.
'I guess you lost this in the old elevator, right?' Wilson said. Clearly he wasn't going to give it back.
Trumper knew he wasn't up to a fight; he'd never have been up to a fight with Wilson, anyway. But he felt sort of plucky; he was dancing light-headed on only the fringe of the real world. He said, 'I'll tell Mulcahy.'
'Mulcahy doesn't want to hear from you,' Wilson said. 'Just you try to find out who Mulcahy even is.' He put the crumpled-up bill in his pocket and kept on smiling.
Trumper didn't really have much interest, but Wilson angered him enough to make him think. He opened his door, slid the suitcase out on the curb and sitting half in, half out, he said. 'I'll tell Dante Calicchio.' He grinned at Wilson's puffy, freshly stitched eyebrow.
Wilson looked as if he was about to hit him. Trumper kept grinning but he thought, I really am crazy. This bohunk is going to beat me to death.
Then a kid wearing a knee-length, Day-Glo orange bush-jacket came out on the sidewalk in front of RALPH PACKER FILMS, INC. It was Kent, but Bogus didn't know him yet. Kent approached the car, bent down and peered in the window. 'There's no parking here,' Kent said officiously.
Wilson was looking for some diversion, and he clearly didn't like Kent's looks. 'Shove off, cunt-head,' he snapped.
Kent shoved off; he went back inside the studio, perhaps to get a gun, Bogus thought.
'You shove off too,'
Wilson said to Bogus.
But Trumper had gone beyond sense; he wasn't being brave, just fatalistic; he thought he didn't care. 'Dante Calicchio,' Bogus said slowly, 'can make of you, Wilson, something a dog wouldn't eat.'
There was some faraway swearing in RALPH PACKER FILMS, INC. Wilson threw the crumpled-up hundred-dollar bill over Bogus's shoulder out onto the sidewalk, and Bogus barely had time to roll out the open door before the thug gunned the car ahead, the door handle catching Trumper's pants pocket and spinning him down to the curb.
Trumper picked up the hundred-dollar bill before he picked himself up; he'd skinned his knees, and he sat on his suitcase with his pants pulled up, peering at his wounds. When he heard people coming out of the film studio, he fully expected a horde of Ralph's henchmen who, as surrogates for Wilson, would kick him to pieces in the street. But there were only two people: the kid in Day-Glo orange and the instantly recognizable shuffling gait of the hairy man beside him.
'Hello, Ralph,' Trumper said. He thrust the hundred-dollar bill into Ralph's paw and got up off the suitcase. 'Get my bag, would you, boy?' he said. 'I understand you're in need of a sound tracker.'
'Thump-Thump!' Ralph cried.
'It was the other one,' Kent mumbled. 'The guy who was driving the car ...'
'Get the suitcase, Kent,' Ralph said. He put his arm around Bogus, looked him over, noticed blood and worse. 'Jesus, Thump-Thump,' Ralph said, 'you don't exactly look as if you've found the Holy Grail.' He unwrapped the hundred-dollar bill, which Trumper snatched back.
'No Holy Grail to be found, Ralph,' Bogus said, trying very hard not to wobble.
'You've been duck hunting again, Thump-Thump,' Ralph said, steering him toward the studio door. Bogus managed a faint smile at this joke. 'Jesus, Thump-Thump, I think the ducks won again.'
At the steep step down to the viewing room, Bogus lost his balance and had to let Ralph carry him into the place. Here I go, he said witlessly to himself. Into a life of art. It didn't seem to be the life for him, but right now, he thought, any life would do.
'Who is he?' Kent asked. He hadn't liked what Bogus had said about sound tracking. Kent was the sound man now; he was appallingly bad at it, but he thought he was learning.
'Who is he?' Ralph laughed. 'I don't know,' he said, and leaned down to where Bogus sat slumped on the projector bench. 'Who are you, really, Thump-Thump?' he teased.
But Trumper was giddy with relief, almost reduced to senseless giggles. It's amazing how you can drop your guard down among friends. 'I'm the Great White Hunter,' he said to Ralph. 'The Great White Duck Hunter.' But he couldn't even sustain the joke and his head lolled on Ralph's shoulder.