a regulation pith helmet and stalked confidently through the crowd, pushing a wheeled basket of mail while honking an attached bicycle horn incessantly. The horn had inspired a group of hungover winos leaning against a nearby deserted storefront to honk back. They sounded like a flock of inebriated Canada geese.
"Pardon me, do you deliver to Forty-Sixth Street?" T.S. asked him politely, ignoring the cacophony of birdcalls behind him.
The mailman paused with one hand poised over the bulb of his bicycle horn. "Why? Who wants to know?"
"I need to find out where someone lives," T.S. explained.
The postman eyed him carefully. Apparently, T.S. didn't look like a serial killer to him, since he then asked, "What's the person's name?"
"I don't know," T.S. explained patiently. "I just know her stage name, Emily Toujours."
"Is this a love thing?" the postman asked. "Cause if it is, take it from me—those actresses aren't worth the trouble. They're high-maintenance girlfriends. They need a lot of attention. I'd get yourself a nice librarian, if I was you." He honked the horn twice for emphasis and smiled.
Resisting the temptation to grab the horn and beat him over the pith helmet with it, T.S. gritted his teeth and asked patiently, "Do you deliver to Forty-Sixth Street or not?"
"Nope." The mailman pointed to a large military green holding box bolted to the sidewalk near the curb. "That would be Beulah. She'll be checking by in about fifteen minutes. Ask her. And good luck, brother. May love shine her blessings upon your brow." He beeped happily and wheeled his cart away, pedestrians parting before his raucous path like a multicolored Red Sea.
Beulah didn't show for a good half-hour and when she did, she wasn't much help. For starters, her feet were killing her and this occupied the first five minutes of their conversation. No, she knew of no one named Emily Toujours or anything else, who lived at 326 West Forty-Sixth Street on the sixth floor. "I never delivered no mail to that floor, not never," she insisted. "It's empty. They's probably warehousing."
She was probably being paid off, T.S. decided grumpily. He stomped away without a plan and stood at the corner of Ninth Avenue and Forty-Sixth Street, watching the downtown traffic. He heard a voice mumbling urgently behind him. "You can do it," it was saying, "This part is for you. You've got it. You're going to wow them. You were born to play this part. Just get in there and grab it."
T.S. stepped back against a nearby streetlight. The voice belonged to a middle-aged actor, who was mumbling to himself as he waited for the light to change. He clutched the Xeroxed pages of a script in one hand and was gesturing into the air with the other. "It's gonna be you," he told himself. "You're gonna knock them dead, Edward, my man. Success is just around the corner."
That did it. T.S. wanted to throw himself in front of one of the many trucks barreling down the avenue. It was all just too depressing. This neighborhood was one big stew of hopeless, naked, walking aspirations.
Except, of course, for the hopeless, naked, stumbling apparitions. Like the rubbery figure lurching up the sidewalk toward him.
It was Emily's building mate, the one who had passed out in the supply closet. She was obviously on her way home after a long hard night that had stretched into the morning. The preposterous wig had slipped to one side and her makeup was badly smeared, but she once again wore the orange mini-dress. It was cut to the crotch and ripped under one arm. No stockings. Just long coffee-colored legs that would have better fit the winner of the fifth race at Belmont. T.S. stepped back and watched her negotiate the corner near Emily's building. What a way to live, he thought sadly. Like a vampire, she was fleeing the light of day and seeking the sanctuary of the dark.
The dark. That's where he had seen her before. She had burst into Robert's during his dinner with Lilah and the bartender had bounced her right back out.
Well, he wasn't doing anything else at the moment. Perhaps it was time to pay Robert's a call.
Thanks to a subway power failure, it was nearly twelve-thirty by the time Auntie Lil reached the Delicious Deli. The owner, Billy, was hustling back and forth handling the small lunch crowd rush of construction workers, taxi drivers and deliverymen. He recognized Auntie Lil and gave her a wide smile, gesturing toward one