“You want?” she asked, licking her lips. She waited just long enough for him to get the double entendre and then handed him the glass.
He turned and looked until he found a chaise longue in the shade. He sat down and stretched his legs.
“Burbridge is in the hospital,” he said. “They’re going to amputate his legs.”
Still smiling, she looked at him with one eye. The other was covered by the heavy hair that fell over her shoulder. But her smile had frozen—a sugary grin on a tan face. Then she swirled the glass, listening to the tinkle of the ice cubes.
“Both legs?”
“Both. Maybe below the knees, maybe above.”
She put down the glass and pushed back her hair. She was no longer smiling.
“Too bad,” she said. “And that means you….”
Dina Burbridge was the one person he could have told how it happened in all the details. He could have even told her how they drove back, his brass knuckles ready, and how Burbridge had begged —not for himself even, but for the children, for her and for Archie, and promised him the Golden Ball. But he didn’t tell her. He pulled out a pack of money from his breast pocket and tossed it onto the red mat right at her long naked legs. The notes fanned out in a rainbow. Dina absentmindedly picked up several and examined them, as though she had never seen one before but wasn’t that interested.
“This is the last earnings, then,” she said.
Redrick leaned over from the chaise longue and pulled the bottle from the ice bucket. He looked at the label. Water was dripping along the dark glass and Redrick held the bottle away from himself, so as not to drip on his pants. He did not like expensive whiskey, but he could force himself to have a slug at a time like this. He was just about to put the bottle to his mouth when he was stopped by indistinct sounds of protestation behind him. He looked around and saw that Hamster was painfully dragging his feet across the lawn, holding a glass of clear liquid in both hands. The exertion was making the sweat pour off his dark wooly head, and his bloodshot eyes had practically popped out of their sockets. When he saw that Redrick was looking at him he extended the glass in despair and sort of mooed and howled, opening his toothless mouth ineffectually.
“I’ll wait, I’ll wait,” Redrick said and shoved the bottle back in the bucket.
Hamster finally limped over, gave Redrick the glass, and patted his shoulder shyly with his arthritic hand.
“Thanks, Dixon,” Redrick said seriously. “That’s just what I need right now. As usual, you’re right on top of things.”
And while Hamster shook his head in embarrassment and rapture and convulsively slapped himself on the hip with his good arm, Redrick raised the glass, nodded to him, and gulped down half. Then he looked at Dina.
“You want?” he asked meaning the glass.
She did not reply. She was folding a bill in half and in half once again, and then again.
“Cut it out,” he said. “You won’t be lost. Your old man….”
She interrupted him.
“And so you dragged him out,” she said. She wasn’t asking, she was stating a fact. “You carried him, you jerk, through the whole Zone, you redheaded cretin, you dragged that bastard on your back-bone, you ass. You blew an opportunity like that.”
He was watching her, his glass forgotten. She got up and stood in front of him, walking over the scattered money, and stopped, her clenched fists jammed into her smooth hip, blocking out the entire world for him with her marvelous body smelling of perfume and sweet sweat.
“He’s got all of you idiots wrapped around his finger. He’ll walk all over your bones. rust wait and see, he’ll walk on your thick skulls on crutches. He’ll show you the meaning of brotherly love and mercy!” She was screaming. “I’ll bet he promised you the Golden Ball, right? The map, the traps, right? Jerk! I can see by your dumb face that he did! Just wait, he’ll give you a map. Lord have mercy on the soul of the redheaded fool Redrick Schuhart.”
Redrick got up slowly and slapped her face hard. She shut up, sank to the grass, and buried her face in her hands.
“You fool … Red,” she muttered. “To blow an opportunity like that.”
Redrick looked down at her and finished the vodka. He thrust it at Hamster without looking at him. There was nothing to talk about. Some fine kids Burbridge conjured up in the Zone. Loving and respectful.
He went into the street and hailed a cab. He told the driver to go to the Borscht. He had to finish up his affairs. He was dying for sleep, everything was swimming before his eyes, and he fell asleep in the cab, his body slumped over the briefcase, and awoke only when the driver shook him.
“We’re here, mister.
“Where are we?” he looked around. “I told you the bank.
“No way, buddy. You said the Borscht. Here’s the Borscht.”
“OK,” Redrick grumbled “I must have dreamed it.”
He paid up and got out, barely able to move his heavy legs. The asphalt was steaming in the sun, and it was very hot. Redrick realized that he was soaked, that there was a bad taste in his mouth, and that his eyes were tearing. He looked around before going in. As usual at this time of day the street was deserted. Businesses weren’t open yet, and the Borscht was supposed to be closed too, but Ernest was at his post already, wiping glasses and giving dirty looks to the trio sopping up beer at the corner table. The chairs had not been removed from the other tables. An unfamiliar porter in a white jacket was mopping the floor and another was struggling with a case of beer behind Ernest. Redrick went up to the bar, put the briefcase on the bar, and said hello. Ernest muttered something that was not exactly welcoming.
“Give me a beer,” Redrick said and yawned convulsively.
Ernest slammed an empty mug on the table, grabbed a bottle from the refrigerator, opened it, and upended it over the mug. Redrick, covering his mouth with his hand, stared at Ernest’s hand. It was trembling. The bottle hit the edge of the mug several times. Redrick looked up at Ernest’s face. His heavy eyelids were lowered, his puffy mouth twisted, and his fat cheeks drooping. The porter was mopping right under Redrick’s feet, the guys in the corner were arguing loudly over the races, and the other porter with the crates backed into Ernest so hard that he reeled. The man mumbled an apology. Ernest spoke in a cramped voice.
“Did you bring it?”
“Bring what?” Redrick looked over his shoulder. One of the guys stood up lazily and went to the door. He stopped in the doorway to light a cigarette.
“Let’s go talk,” Ernest said. The porter with the mop was now also between Redrick and the door. A big black man, along the lines of Gutalin, but twice as broad.
“Let’s go,” Redrick said and picked up the briefcase. He didn’t feel sleepy anymore, in either eye.
He went behind the bar and squeezed past the porter with the cases of beer. The porter had apparently caught his finger. He was sucking his fingertip and watching Redrick. He was a big fellow, with a broken nose and cauliflower ears. Ernest went into the back room, and Redrick followed him, because now the three guys from the corner table were blocking the door and the porter with the mop was standing near the curtains that led to the storeroom.
In the back room Ernest stepped aside and sat on a chair by the wall. Captain Quarterblad, yellow and angry, stood up from the table. From somewhere on the left a huge UN trooper appeared, his helmet pulled down over his eyes, and quickly frisked him with his large hands. He slowed down at his right pocket and extracted the brass knuckles. He prodded Redrick in the captain s direction. Redrick approached the table and set the briefcase in front of Captain Quarterblad.
“You bloodsucker,” he said to Ernest.
Ernest raised his eyebrows and shrugged one shoulder. It was all clear. The two porters in the doorway were smirking, and there were no other doors and the window was barred from the outside.
Captain Quarterblad, his face contorted by disgust, was digging around with both hands in the briefcase, and taking out the swag and Putting in on the table: two small empties; nine batteries; various sizes of black sprays, sixteen pieces in a polyethylene package; two perfectly preserved sponges; and one jar of carbonated clay….
“Anything in your pockets?” Captain Quarterblad asked softly.
“Empty them.
“Snakes,” Redrick said. “Skunks.”