Jailbird - Kurt Vonnegut [82]
Other calls had gone to Georgia—one to the RAMJAC regional office, asking if they had a chauffeur named Cleveland Lawes working for them, and another to the Federal Minimum Security Adult Correctional Facility at Finletter Air Force Base, asking if they had a guard named Clyde Carter and a prisoner named Dr. Robert Fender there.
Clewes asked me if I understood what was going on.
“No,” I said. “This is just the dream of a jailbird. It’s not supposed to make sense.”
Clewes asked me what had happened to my shoes.
“I left them in the padded cell,” I said.
“You were in a padded cell?” he said.
“It’s very nice,” I said. “You can’t possibly hurt yourself.”
A man in the front seat next to the chauffeur now turned his face to us. I knew him, too. He had been one of the lawyers who had escorted Virgil Greathouse into prison on the morning before. He was Arpad Leen’s lawyer, too. He was worried about my having lost my shoes. He said we would go back to the police station and get them.
“Not on your life!” I said. “They’ve found out by now that I threw the bowling trophy down in the shit, and they’ll just arrest me again.”
Edel and Clewes now drew away from me some.
“This has to be a dream,” said Clewes.
“Be my guest,” I said. “The more the merrier.”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen—” said the lawyer genially. “Please, you mustn’t worry so. You are about to be offered the opportunity of your lives.”
“When the hell did she see me?” said Edel. “What was the wonderful thing she saw me do?”
“We may never know,” said the lawyer. “She seldom explains herself, and she’s a mistress of disguise. She could be anybody.”
“Maybe she was that big black pimp that came in after you last night,” Edel said to me. “I was nice to him. He was eight feet tall.”
“I missed him,” I said.
“You’re lucky,” said Edel.
“You two know each other?” said Clewes.
“Since childhood!” I said. I was going to blow this dream wide open by absolutely refusing to take it seriously. I was damn well going to get back to my bed at the Arapahoe or my cot in prison. I didn’t care which.
Maybe I could even wake up in the bedroom of my little brick bungalow in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and my wife would still be alive.
“I can promise you she wasn’t the tall pimp,” said the lawyer. “That much we can be sure of: Whatever she looks like, she is not tall.”
“Who isn’t tall?” I said.
“Mrs. Jack Graham,” said the lawyer.
“Sorry I asked,” I said.
“You must have done her some sort of favor, too,” the lawyer said to me, “or done something she saw and admired.”
“It’s my Boy Scout training,” I said.
So we came to a stop in front of a rundown apartment building on the Upper West Side. Out came Frank Ubriaco, the owner of the Coffee Shop. He was dressed for the dream in a pale-blue velvet suit and green-and-white cowboy boots with high, high heels. His French-fried hand was elegantly sheathed in a white kid glove. Clewes pulled down a jumpseat for him.
I said hello to him.
“Who are you?” he said.
“You served me breakfast this morning,” I said.
“I served everybody breakfast this morning,” he said.
“You know him, too?” said Clewes.
“This is my town,” I said. I addressed the lawyer, more convinced than ever that this was a dream, and I told him, “All right—let’s pick up my mother next.”
He echoed me uncertainly. “Your mother?”
“Sure. Why not? Everybody else is here,” I said.
He wanted to be cooperative. “Mr. Leen didn’t say anything specific about your not bringing anybody else along. You’d like to bring your mother?”
“Very much,” I said.
“Where is she?” he said.
“In a cemetery in Cleveland,” I said, “but that shouldn’t slow you down.”
He thereafter avoided direct conversations with me.
When we got underway again, Ubriaco asked those of us in the backseat who we were.
Clewes and Edel introduced themselves. I declined to do so.
“They’re all people who caught the eye of Mrs. Graham, just as you did,” said the lawyer.
“You guys know her?” Ubriaco asked Clewes and Edel and me.
We all