Page 80 of Shadow Ticket
Imagining that Slide Gearheart might at least be halfway willing to incline an ear to the subject, “Slide, is it really that bad? I thought I was past all that. Will they always be throwing that once-a-torpedo routine at me?”
“You think you’ve found redemption via Cheez Princess? That anybody owes you forgiveness, that you won’t surrender to the old torpedical impulses the minute somebody makes it worth your while? I’ve seen it happen, sure, that and stranger than that, once or twice out in the long and slowlydeepening twilight of our nation’s history, but if you’re looking for guarantees, them I don’t do, find a used car dealer or something.”
What was Hicks expecting? “It’s all OK, Slide, no more of that riding to the rescue for me, rather be out all night in the M’waukee weather, watching nothing happen behind some bedroom window. No more runaway rich dame tickets for li’l old H. McT., thanks, this one so help me’ll be my last.”
“Ah yes,” Slide out the side of his mouth, “and how familiar the refrain.”
“You say somethin?”
“When—that’s not if, but when—you sign on to yournextDame in Distress ticket, and you suddenly realize, here it is all over again, try not to spare a thought for the old embittered newshound who predicted it, in as much detail as you could stand for.”
“I keep thinking Praediger might be some help at least.”
“Are you kidding? All he’s after is a coke dealer who won’t charge him a month’s wages for what’ll turn out to be half a pound of Alka-Seltzer. Don’t expect a philosophical cop. Drug habits are no guarantee of advanced thought, some of the least educational people around here are devotees of the nasal bobsled run. Don’t imagine that when the moment comes Praediger will choose anything but peace and quiet, whatever he has to go along with to get it…”
“Except for goin screaming bughouse whenever the topic of Bruno Airmont comes up, o’course.”
“Well, Bruno…you ever meet Bruno in person?”
“Not yet.”
“Take it from a longtime veteran of copydesks throughout the land,” advises Slide, “seen so many tough customers I could write you a bird book identifying all the different types, ain’t often comes along as deep of a desperado as Bruno Airmont. Maybe your grandma told you there’s some good in everybody? Well, Bruno in the neighborhood’ll even send Granny reachin for the squirrel rifle…”
And why should Hicks be all that surprised, recalling how often a stray tip or even bum steer has converged to the same list of bad actors, however feeble the memory or elaborate the lie, Bruno keeps showing up, the same low point everything nearby seems fated to go draining into, as if there’ssome powerful whirlpool of modern crime invisibly at work that gumshoes have been known to go mystical about, sloping off into long speakeasy monologues, fate versus free will and so forth, sometimes getting so cranked up on the subject that they forget to buy the round when it’s their turn, and nobody takes the trouble to remind them.
—
Among many privatematters Daphne hasn’t mentioned to Hicks is a recurring dream about Bruno, on some faraway island, stepping outdoors every day at noon to shoot the sun with a ship’s sextant, just to make sure the island isn’t somehow, day to day,changingpositionin the sea, off on a voyage by itself to an enchanted landfall…Of course it’s an island, complete with hula-hula girls, a sleeping volcano, a leaf-thatched saloon that’s become a local favorite for dodging into each midday as the clouds rise over the vast ocean, backlit some till-now-unimagined shade of red, rushing in at express speed, the skies letting loose…which is usually about when she wakes up.
Till one night with sleep out of the question, in a turbulence and drift of multiple unlikelihoods, she and Bruno meet up.
At Night of the World, inspired by the multi-floor cabarets of Berlin, what circles of depravity may be found do not rise from street level but instead go corkscrewing down beneath it, ten floors down it’s said, ten known of and more rumored, down through boiling mineral springs, toward ancient depths few have been willing to dare, each with its own bar and dance band and clientele.
Running on what’s left of her old international playgirl reflexes, which she still thinks of as nerve, Daphne has a look inside. Each table here has a small circular cathode-ray tube or television screen set flush in the tabletop, throbbing more than flickering with shaggy images of about 100 lines’ resolution. Viewers sometimes do not agree on the nature of the image. Pareidolia is common. You look down into it, like a crystal gazer, and faces loom unbidden. Numbered push-button switches allow you to connect to any other table in the place and watch each other as you chat.
“The future of flirtation…here they call it Gesichtsröhre, or ‘Face-Tube.’ ” He doesn’t look insane, but as Daphne has long come to understand,you never know. He does keep on referring to a hydropathic which could easily be of the mental sort, “except for the nights.” Shivers dramatically. “The fountains all night, same frequency range as human speech, soon enough you begin to hear the spoken words, which can drive you quickly as insane as any of the inmates, a yardful of head cases who scream all night in different languages and by the approach of dawn have become invisible. Miles outside of town in any case. Securely locked at nightfall. Better to stay here where the light is more forgiving, and pretend that outside this establishment waits only a long patch of darkness we must somehow make it through.”
“Someplace,” she lectures him, firm but friendly, “you must’ve picked up the notion that ladies of my vintage are automatic pushovers for tragic older types. Do everybody a favor, old-timer, let it drop. Nobody’s gazing into your eyes, if we’re watching anything it’s your feet and whatever it is those there are in, which in this case ain’t exactly John Lobbs.”
“Damned if you don’t remind me of a daughter I used to have, talked just like that.”
“Heard that one too, easy to whistle, no more’n half an octave range.”
“And yet, can’t get her off my mind. Last I heard she was in some trouble and didn’t know it.”
“This’d be years ago, natch.”
“Some of us are still brooding about it.”
“Because you could have done something once to fix it, but you did nothing and now it’s too late.”
But for the moment a simple brush-off would somehow cost her more than she’s brought with her in her evening bag. Curiously, this conversation seems to be following a different storyline than the usual Old Goat Looking to Get Laid. Some payoff beyond that, some wild hope…as slowly, untrembling as stage light brought up by a skilled hand at the rheostat, she recognizes that of course it’s been Bruno all along, as meantime he, maestro of timing, reverting to a Wisconsin dialect from years back, thoughtfully taking her hand…
“Of course,” some Viennese know-it-all who happens to be eavesdropping (did anybody ask?) will be sure to comment, “each knows perfectly well who the other is.”
In fact it seems the right moment for them to have a look eye-to-eye,dizzy and deep, except wouldn’t you know it, just about now a Russ Columbo–style crooner steps into the follow spot, starting off slow and expressive, with a zither backup—
Drinkin my way up, th’ Dan-ube,
