there is strings can be puled and you will end up here and not Europe where the game is already winding down.
Red’s was no busier than I’d have expected on a Tuesday. My b-girl Barbara was sitting with the off-duty bartender who’d given me the dirty look before, and she made a point of looking away from me when I passed by. I was almost glad for her, and it simplified things around Red’s if she wasn’t looking for another turn.
I didn’t see any other girls that appealed, though. I hurried through a whisky soda and stepped outside into the night air, warm and still for a Kansas March. I was on the verge of going inside to phone for a cab when I saw what looked like an old friend sitting in the far corner of the lot. It was a 1916 Hudson, a Phaeton Super 6, identical to the one I’d owned as a boy, painted white or something near it. Someone had taken good care of it; it gleamed in the moonlight, and I wanted to hear if it ran as nice as it looked.
Before I’d considered what I was doing I found myself climbing in and fooling with the starter, and then I was driving eastward toward town. The Super 6 ran as well as mine ever had, and I wished I could congratulate the owner; maybe someday I would; maybe I’d even let on that I was the one who’d stolen it that beautiful spring night back in March of ’46.
What the hell, I was going to Kansas City to get my ashes hauled and to talk to the owner of the Nonpareil Photographic Studio. Lester could probably use the connection even if I couldn’t.
I tried not to wake Sally as I rummaged the bedroom closet in the dark, but she wasn’t sleeping well. “You’re packing a bag?”
“Ssshh. Go back to sleep. Business trip. Five-fifteen train.”
“You never said anything about a business trip.”
I buckled the suitcase shut and gave her a peck on her cheek, cupping her left breast as I did so. She smelled like soap and cigarettes, and for just a second I loved her as much as I ever had.
BY THE TIME I abandoned the Super 6 in the parking lot of Union Station, it had started to get cool. Inside I waited in line behind a stout lady in a mink coat topped with a fox stole. The fox’s glass eyes were both loose and hanging from its furry face by what seemed to be strips of rotten suede, and he stared wall-eyed at the early morning crowd while his mistress sorted through some sort of complicated ticketing problem with the clerk. I wasn’t paying any attention to the details, since I was in no particular hurry; I had a good hour and a half before my train left. I was enjoying the subtle, almost musical interplay of her bullying whine and the clerk’s stubborn, irritated monotone. At length, another ticket window opened and I moved over to it. By the time I’d transacted my business the confrontation at the other window had degenerated into shouting, and my ticketseller glanced over and snickered. The fat lady had been joined by an expensively dressed middle-aged man the size of a twelve-year-old, and he stood behind the lady as if for protection.
“Looks like Casper Milquetoast from the funny pages, don’t he?” the ticketseller said, and I had to laugh. The little fellow did, right down to his rimless spectacles.
I bought the early editions of the Morning Beacon and the Morning Eagle from the midget who ran the newsstand and took a seat in the Harvey House. The Harvey girl who took my order looked like she’d rather be sleeping, and I asked if I should buy her a cup of coffee too. She faked a chuckle, stifled a yawn, and explained that this wasn’t a normal waking hour for her, that she was covering a shift for a girl whose mother was ill. “Normally I don’t get up until seven at least. Boy, I don’t know how people do it. I’m so cranky I gotta watch I don’t slap somebody.”
BY THE TIME the Harvey girl brought my bacon and eggs I was almost done with the Eagle. It seemed odd, the idea that there was still news to report after the war was won. But people were still robbing grocery stores and crashing their cars and having Chamber of Commerce meetings, still drowning