Libra - Don Delillo [158]
He called a stripper named Janet Alvord.
“Do I look swishy to you, Janet? What about my voice? People tell me there’s a lisp. Is this the way a queer sounds to a neutral person? Do you think I’m latent or what? Could I go either way? Don’t pee on my legs, Janet. I want the total truth.”
The bartender was here. Jack complained that the bar glasses were not clean enough to suit him. He spotted the new waitress, who walked in wearing a low-cut ruffled blouse. He took. her into a comer and told her a joke. She had a rumbling laugh. He told another quick one and walked off fast, looking back at her laughing in the corner.
He liked a woman with a freckled cleavage.
He went down to the car and drove home for an early dinner. Because what is it like to be a Jew in a place, in a state like Texas? You feel to yourself don’t ever speak out, don’t ever stand out. But he loved this city. It made him a living in his own way. He didn’t have to hide what he was. He didn’t have to listen to Jewish jokes from the MC at the club. The MC knew one Jewish joke could land him in Emergency. No complaints. It’s just the little feeling you get sometimes there’s some secret thing they’re shielding. He grew up in the neighborhoods, the crosstown wars. What was Dallas next to that? He used to come home with blood on his clothes for sticking up for the Jewish race. He met his sisters at the streetcar stop in Dago Town to make sure nobody catcalled Jew-girl at them, or walked close behind smacking their lips, or put a hand on them. No complaints. It’s just the impression of you’re off to the side. But he had friends on the force. He liked to give a loan to a young cop with a new baby. Plainclothes officers came to the club. How many cities could he name where a Jew can walk into police headquarters and he hears, Hello, how are you, it’s jack. I owe my life to this town.
George said they were having spaghetti tonight.
“I thought tonight was a broiled haddock.”
“Where?”
“Didn’t I come home with haddock—when was it?”
“I don’t know,” George said.
Jack took a Preludin with some leftover juice.
“Ask me I’m unhappy.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning with reference to what he said.”
“No loan.”
“They’re getting ready to padlock my clubs.”
“You take too many of those things, Jack.”
“They’re medically an obesity drug.”
“Nobody’s that fat.”
“I need the stimuli,” Jack said.
He took the newspapers he’d bought that morning and went into the toilet. All Jack’s reading took place in the toilet. It was the best part of his day. He read the nightlife, the ads for the clubs, the local tidbits, the entertainment column. There were the shows around town. He checked the competition. His mind settled down when he was crapping. There was a restfulness and calm.
Later he stood in the kitchen talking to George.
He didn’t want to reach the point again where he had to sleep at the club. There was a time not long ago when he didn’t have a place to live. He was between apartments with not a lot of ready cash to maneuver. He slept at the club. He lived there, ate there, slept in a foldout bed in a back room next to the room with the dogs. His whole life conducted under one roof. A stink of beer and cigarettes and dog and what-have-you. That was the second-worst period after the Cotton Bowl Hotel, where he sat in the dark for eight weeks. He refused to go down to that level again. Of no place to live. Of totally outside the norm.
George said you can tell when the spaghetti’s cooked by picking a strand out of the boiling water and flinging it against the wall. If it sticks, it’s done.
Jack ate quickly and set out for the club in his bouncing Olds mobile.
Guy Banister sat in his office after dark, the old lion head sunk in thought. Some bum was urinating in the street, drilling the wall of the building. The desk lamp was on. Guy picked up his file on the Red Chinese. It was the file he saved for quiet times of day, the final nightmare file, to be brooded over slowly.
Red Chinese troops are being dropped into the Baja by the fucking