Humboldt's Gift (1976 Pulitzer Prize) - Saul Bellow [45]
Cantabile now hurried out to the lunch counter, and I followed him. There he dried his hands with paper napkins which he pulled from the metal dispenser angrily. He crumpled these embossed flimsy papers and threw them on the floor. He said to Mickey, “Why don’t you have soap and towels in the can? Why don’t you wash the goddamn place out? There’s no disinfectant in there.”
Mickey was very mild, and he said, “No? Joe is supposed to take care of it. I buy him Top Job, Lysol.” He spoke to Joe. “Don’t you put in mothballs any more?” Joe was black and old, and hé answered nothing. He was leaning on the shoe-shine chair with its brass pedestals, the upside-down legs and rigid feet (reminiscent of my own feet and legs during the Yoga headstand). He was there to remind us all of some remote, grand considerations and he would not answer any temporal questions.
“You guys are gonna buy supplies from me,” said Cantabile. “Disinfectant, liquid soap, paper towels, everything. The name is Cantabile. I’ve got a supply business on Clybourne Avenue.” He took out a long pitted ostrich-skin wallet and threw several business cards on the counter.
“I’m not the boss,” said Mickey. “All I have is the restaurant concession.” But he picked up a card with deference. His big fingers were covered with black knife-marks.
“I better hear from you.”
“I’ll pass it along to the Management. They’re downtown.”
“Mickey, who owns the Bath?” I said.
“All I know is the Management, downtown.”
It would be curious, I thought, if the Bath should turn out to belong to the Syndicate.
“Is George Swiebel here?” said Cantabile.
“No.”
“Well, I want to leave him a message.”
“I’ll give you something to write on,” said Mickey.
“There’s nothing to write. Tell him he’s a dumb shit. Tell him I said so.”
Mickey had put on his specs to look for a piece of paper, and now he turned his spectacled face toward us as if to say that his only business was the coleslaw and skirt-steaks and whitefish. Cantabile did not ask for old Father Myron, who was steaming himself below.
We went out into the street. The weather had suddenly cleared. I couldn’t decide whether gloomy weather suited the environment better than bright. The air was cold, the light was neat, and the shadows thrown by blackened buildings divided the sidewalks.
I said, “Well, now let me give you this money. I brought new bills. This ought to wrap the whole thing up, Mr. Cantabile.”
“What—just like that? You think it’s so easy?” said Rinaldo.
“Well, I’m sorry. It shouldn’t have happened. I really regret it.”
“You regret it! You regret your hacked-up car. You stopped a check on me, Citrine. Everybody blabbed. Everybody knows. You think I can allow it?”
“Mr. Cantabile, who knows—who is everybody? Was it really so serious? I was wrong—”
“Wrong, you fucking ape. . . !”
“Okay, I was stupid.”
“Your pal George tells you to stop a check, so you stop it. Do you take that asshole’s word for everything? Why didn’t he catch Emil and me in the act? He has you pull this sneaky stunt and then you and he and the undertaker and the tuxedo guy and the other dummies spread around the gossip that Ronald Cantabile is a punk. Man! You could never get away with that. Don’t you realize!”
“Yes, now I realize.”
“No, I don’t know what you realize. I was watching at the game, and I don’t dig you. When are you going to do something and know what you’re doing?” Those last words he spaced, he accented vehemently and uttered into my face. Then he snatched away his coat, which I was still holding for him, the rich brown raglan with its large buttons. Circe might have had buttons like those in her sewing box. They were very beautiful, really, rather Oriental-treasure buttons.
The last garment I had seen resembling this one was worn by the late Colonel McCormick. I was then about twelve years old. His limousine had stopped in front of the Tribune Tower, and two short men came out. Each man held two pistols, and they circled