Page 44 of Shadow Ticket
“You can trust my sacred word, their gratitude amounts to more than any bag can hold.”
“A head start out of town.”
“A word to the weisenheimer, is how they put it.”
“Somethin fishy going on, Lino, nobody wants to spill the straight story, you can call it honorable if you want, but I call it spinach. Don’t try to tell meomertà, I know what dummied-up Italian looks like and this ain’t it. Cokeheads getting the third degree have more of a grip on their nerves than any of you mugs do lately.”
“Hicks, now—” reaching playfully into his suit for a roscoe he may not be carrying, “y’ just better watch ’at stuff, once.”
“Maybe those elves weren’t hired by anybody you associate with, so you keep sayin, which case whoever it was might be makin you folks as nervous as they’re makin me. It’s OK, Lino, no dishonor.”
“What have you got to tell us,” chuckling more in disbelief than amusement, “about dishonor? Lissen-a me now. Down in the deep Mezzogiorno, there grows a grape so harsh and bitter you’d never make wine from it alone—but when you blend it with other grapes, sometimes only a couple percent, suddenly a miracle, mmmwa!che figata, you capeesh-a da jive?”
“Only a beer drinker, Lino, but I’ll keep it in mind.”
“You want to know more, go ask your pal Dippy Chazz.”
Sure, andauguriwith that one, Chazz’s phone line has been disconnected for a week, as Lino, from a quick look at his kisser, is also aware, and Chazz according to what Hicks can find out fled into exile, out beyond the pickle patches, someplace quite unconnected with local geography.
Hicks considers a diplomatic reproof but settles for “Chazzy’sumbatz, nuttier than a Giant Bar.”
—
Hicks and Aprilrendezvous aboard the southbound SSChristopher Columbus, once queen of the ’93 Chicago Fair and about to be queen dowager of the new fair coming up, a festive pile of decks like an electric birthday cake, all raring to go as the next century of progress and miles o’ smiles, as it sez in the ads.
The shoreline rolls by, some cumulus in the west backlit by the setting sun, spirits, mixers, and chasers flow, and the dance orchestration includes both a full-keyboard accordion and a Chemnitzer concertina, which means every once in a while, between the slow dreamy numbers and the upbeat jingles about how great everything is these days, there’ll be polkas. Just in case anybody was thinking of wandering off and jumping overboard.
“Enjoy it while you can, Chuckles.”
“Because…”
April, hands to hips, eyebrows all zigzag, won’t look at him.
“Unless maybe it’s all sealed and done already.”
“Oh, you damned ox,” and she’s crying all over his shirt just back from the Chinese place.
“You could have said something, even if I already knew.”
“You? Who would tellyouanything?” She has fished out one of his shirttails and is blotting her nose, with a ladylike sniffle, all over it.
“Your line,” after a while, “is, ‘D and D, Hicks, took the oath, can’t say any more, please don’t hate me’—”
“I know my line, Fathead— oh, are we on the air?”
A moon of the sort more commonly observed in Iowa has just risen, and the plaintive squeezeboxes are now joined by electric uke, reeds, French horns, a jazz drummer on temporary booby-hatch leave. April and Hicks are dancing. “Someday,” he whispers, “it’ll be the right joint, and a full-size band, maybe even a moon like this one, and we’ll dance like those Castles do, long as you like, I promise.”
“Meaning you’d have to never let go of me, yeah, just dream on, you big chump.”
The charmed old vessel steams gently along the wreck-strewn coastline of Wisconsin. Children on shore drifting asleep beneath the roofs passing in the moonlight, distant polka and Lindy-hop music stealing into their early dreams, plus the occasional ballad such as the one Hicks is crooning into April’s ear.
Ubiquitous…you’re out, ev-
-v’rywhere, you’re
ubiquitous…like the
airwaves, through the air, it’s
