The Adjustment - By Scott Phillips Page 0,16
moustache of his. Always talking about how handsome this movie star or that one is. Occurs to me you should have messed up his face, maybe. Thinking maybe if he wasn’t so pretty she’d quit hiring him.”
“Problem with that is she might stumble onto someone halfway competent, then you’d be screwed.”
“That might be right. Anyhow, I think she might be in cahoots with some of the board. There’s a move afoot to fire you, boy, you know that?”
“I didn’t.”
“You and me both. One or two of ’em on the board want to replace me with the wife, can you beat that?”
“Doesn’t seem likely.”
“They think I’m irresponsible. Want her sitting in here doing what they tell her to do. Because her last name’s Collins. Inspires confidence. Look like I’d just stepped aside for her.”
This was bad news. I might not stay at Collins forever, but if I did go I was determined to leave at a time of my choosing and on my own terms. Another goddamn mess for me to fix, and probably without much in the way of help from Uncle Blackout here. “Who’s with her?”
“Huff, that sanctimonious son of a bitch.” Ernest Huff, the comptroller, was a notorious straight arrow, stickler for detail and all-around pain in the dick. “Latham, probably, he doesn’t like the way I do things. I’ll ask a couple of the fellows who else there is, and when I find out we’ll fix the sons of bitches.” He swished some saliva around in his mouth to get rid of the chunks of pill. “Get me a drink of water.”
I left the room and stepped out into the reception area, where I was rewarded with a sweet look from Millie Grau. I poured a glass of water from the cooler and went back into the office, where Collins swigged half of it down and gargled.
“You shouldn’t drink water,” he said after he swallowed the rest. “Know why?”
“No. Why?”
“Fish fuck in it.”
FIVE
THE BEST JOB I EVER HAD
I WAS TRYING TO find an excuse to get back up to see Vickie in Kansas City but was stymied by the boss’s baffling failure to knock up any more wayward girls. She sent me a letter at work—the only address I’d provided her—promising me a hell of a good time when I got there. I answered with a non-committal post card. I needed to get back to KC. It wasn’t just Vickie; I was looking into a potential source of income separate from the job.
The idea had come to me when I passed a cigar store that my grandfather used to frequent on his occasional trips to visit us in Wichita. Trebegs were his brand, and he used to send me off with a two-dollar bill to buy a boxful and let me keep the change. Another popular item at the cigar store were dirty comic books and postcards, kept under the counter and only available to customers the clerk knew well. Good old Grandpa bought me a stack of Tijuana Bibles when I was twelve, a real godsend for my budding career as a chronic onanist, which lasted until I was fifteen and started getting laid regularly.
The severe, lipless relic manning the counter in the present day had stared at me as though offended by my very existence; he certainly lacked the hail-fellow-well-met demeanor that any sort of under-the-counter trade demands of a merchant, so I didn’t bother inquiring. Something came to me as I walked out the door, though, the memory of a wholesaler that used to provide me with pornographic photos in Rome: the Nonpareil Photographic Studio of Kansas City, Missouri.
One night Park and I were along for the ride with Collins at a blind pig up near Newton that one of his high-rolling buddies had told him about. It was in a big farmhouse in a neighborhood on the outskirts of town, and it was better appointed than a lot of real bars I’d been in. The boss was in an expansive mood, after a long and friendly conversation with the proprietor regarding the ins and outs of rural lawbreaking. They established at length that bringing whores into the blind pig, even just for tonight, might jeopardize the barkeep’s delicate position with local law enforcement. It was decided that after a couple more drinks we would head for the Crosley Hotel just north of downtown and find some there.
Collins stood with his arm on the mantle above the fireplace and smirked. “Admit it, boys, this