talk I’d been meaning to make died in my throat. The two pictures which had hung over Vern’s stool since the
beginning of time–one of Jesus walking on the Sea of Galilee while his boatbound disciples gawped at him and the
other of Vern’s wife in a buckskin-fringed Sweetheart of the Rodeo outfit and a turnof-the-century hairdo–were
both gone. What had replaced them shouldn’t have been shocking, especially in light of Vernon’s age, but it hit me like
a barge-load of bricks just the same.
It was a card, that’s all–a simple card showing the silhouette of a man fishing on a lake at sunset. It was the sentiment
printed below the canoe that floored me: HAPPY RETIREMENT!
You could have doubled the way I felt when Peoria told me he might see again and still have come up short. Memories
flickered through my mind with the speed of cards being shuffled by a riverboat
gambler. There was the time Vern
broke into the office next to mine to call an ambulance when that nutty dame, Agnes Sternwood, first tore my phone
out of the wall and then swallowed what she swore was drain-cleaner. Thè`draincleaner”
turned out to be nothing
but crystals of raw sugar, and the office Vern broke into turned out to be a highclass horse parlor. So far as I know, the
guy who leased the place and slapped MacKenzie Imports on the door is still receiving his annual Sears Roebuck
catalogue in San Quentin. Then there was the guy Vern cold-conked with his stool just before he could ventilate my
guts; that was the Mavis Weld business again, of course. Not to mention the time he brought his daughter to me–what
a babe she was!–when she got involved with that dirty-picture racket.
Vern retiring?
It wasn’t possible. It just wasn’t.
“Vernon,” I asked, “what kind of joke is this?’
“No joke, Mr. Umney,” he said, and as he brought the elevator car to a stop on
Three, he began to hack a deep cough I’d
never heard in all the years I’d known him. It was like listening to marble bowling balls rolling down a stone alley. He
took the Camel out of his mouth, and I was horrified to see the end of it was pink, and not with lipstick. He looked at it
for a moment, grimaced, then replaced it and yanked back the accordion grille. “Thuhree, Mr. Tuggle.”
“Thanks, Vern,” Bill said.
“Remember the party on Friday,” Vernon said. His words were muffled; he’d taken a handkerchief spotted with brown
stains out of his back pocket and was wiping his lips with it. `Ì sure would admire for you to come.” He glanced at me
with his rheumy eyes, and what was in them scared the bejabbers out of me. Something was waiting for Vernon Klein
just around the next bend in the road, and that look said Vernon knew all about it.
“You too, Mr. Umney–we been
through a lot together, and I’d be tickled to raise a glass with you.”
“Wait a minute!” I shouted, grabbing Bill as he tried to step out of the elevator.
“You wait just a God damned minute,
both of you! What party? What’s going on here?’
“Retirement,” Bill said. `Ìt usually happens at some point after your hair turns white, in case you’ve been too busy to
notice. Vernon’s party is going to be in the basement on Friday afternoon. Everybody in the building’s going to be
there, and I’m going to make my world-famous Dynamite Punch. What’s the matter with you, Clyde? You’ve known
for a month that Vern was finishing up on May thirtieth.”
That made me angry all over again, the way I’d been when Peoria called me a faggot. I grabbed Bill by the padded
shoulders of his double-breasted suit and gave him a shake. “The hell you say!”
He gave me a small, pained smile. “The hell I don’t, Clyde. But if you don’t want to come, fine. Stay away. You’ve
been acting poco loco for the last six months, anyhow.”
I shook him again. “What do you mean, poco loco?’
“Crazy as a loon, nutty as a fruitcake, two wheels off the road, out to lunch,