Ruined Map - Abe Kobo [72]
“Do they all appear in set places?”
“Never,” he said, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. “We’re different. I don’t think you get it … do you? You don’t look like you were one of us. Members of our club are all first-class patrons. Say, do you think I’m cute? Do I trouble you?”
“You’re a good-looking boy.”
“Well then. Want me to slap you around? Want to drink my piss? What about licking the soles of my shoes?”
I shrank back from his strangely set and unmoving eyes. “I think I’ll just pass that up.”
“I thought so. Dirty old men with gobs of money come around plenty … and every once in a while some television star, but …”
“I have something to ask you. You all would know, I think. Did your boss ever say anything about any fuel suppliers?”
“Fuel suppliers? You mean a customer of the club?”
“Well, don’t worry about it if you don’t know.”
“Questions I don’t like. They make me mad.”
“But just one more. Can you tell me where your boss usually stayed lately?”
“The boss was a square-dealer. He never padded down in any one place.”
“But I imagine he had some baggage, a briefcase or something where he kept his personal effects …”
“He would throw things out when he had used them, even underwear and toothbrushes. It was really something. He’d use something two or three times and sell it to us on the Q.T. for half price.”
“But he must have had something, something where he’d jot down things he needed, like a diary, for instance, or something like that … something he wouldn’t usually carry around with him.”
“I never saw anything.”
“I’m not questioning who has the right of possession. I had permission to borrow a diary. It’s something that has no value for you boys.”
“Everything we had was his, even the mattresses we slept on and the hair cream we used. We didn’t need to have anything.”
“Can’t I get you to give me a little more time?”
“Can’t do it.”
“What about your family?”
“Forget it. They all ask that.”
“What did the boss do if someone got homesick?”
“He was very observant. Even when he was just loafing around the square in front of the station, he noticed everything. Never made a mistake. Furthermore, he was a good teacher, so the boys soon got to like the business a lot.”
“Anyway, you boys are getting older.”
“Can’t be helped. When you think about it, nobody can help getting old. Well, sometime I’ll shake some old customers down. I’d really like to start up a snack bar or a gas station or something.”
“DID YOU know what kind of fellows those boys were from the start?”
“Yes, I did. Just let me get close and they run away terrified. I don’t have a chance to say a word.”
She laughed, shrugging her shoulders as if joking, furtively moistening the edges of her lips with the beer. Again I was seated in front of the lemon-yellow curtains, and as it was still light outside, the room was filled with a lemon-yellow light. In it only the black mourning clothes were at odds, seeming to have been taken from a black and white photo album.
“About the diary. I tried sounding him out about that, but it was no use. The more I tried to get something out of him the tighter he kept his mouth shut.”
“Diary? What diary?”
“Your husband’s, of course. Your brother was supposed to bring it over here today.”
“Oh.”
Disinterestedly she continued steadily licking at her beer, like some kitten: it was I indeed who was so stirred up and angry that my chest ached.
“I drove down the freeway a little while ago.”
“Why? I wonder.”
“As I went along I thought how wonderful it would be if I could go on like that forever. And then I felt I really could. But I shudder now when I think of my psychological state at the time. Supposing everything had come out as I wished, supposing I had gone on and on and, no matter how far I went, never, never came to the toll gate …”
Suddenly she raised her head from her glass.
“It’s all right. You’d run out