The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [170]
prairies that had returned over demolitions with winter grass pricking the snow and thrashed and frozen together into beards by the wind. The cold simmer of the lake also, blue; the steady skating of rails too, down to the dark. I went to Carson's on Wabash Avenue, the book section on the ground floor, warm and busy with a late crowd of shoppers under the Christmas bells and silvery ivies. I didn't as a rule loiter long, thus drawing attention. I knew what books I was after, a rare Plotinus, an English edition of The Enneads worth a whole lot of money, more than it was priced. I took the volumes down, leafed them, looked over the bindings, put them under my arm, and with fair ease made my way to the Wabash Avenue door. It was spinning slowly. I got into the quadrant that opened up for me and was half through when the door stuck and caught me, inches from the street. I turned to see whether the cause of the jamming was the worst that could be, having in my mind already police, court, and prison, up to a terrible year in Bridewell. But behind me was Jimmy Klein, practically a stranger to me since the old days, but not a stranger nevertheless. It was he who had me caught in the- brass barrel that the doors turned within, and he signaled me that he I would release me, that I was to wait in the street. There was a good deal of practice in his regard, under the felt brim, and the hook of the forefinger downward, meaning precisely, "Stop outside." By these signs I knew him to have become a store dick. Hadn't Clem Tambow told me that he was working at Carson's? I wasn't going to make a break. The first thing was to get free of the trap, and I surrendered the books to him in the street. He said quickly, "By the stoplight on the corner. I'll be there right away." I saw his hasty back and hat as he ran in the circle of the door. His behavior was not angry, but he appeared to deal with what he had foreseen and been ready for. By the stoplight, in the crowd, I sweated in the cold air, weak and grateful after the passed danger. Grandma's warning against Jimmy, that he was a crook, came back to me. He "salt, anyway, with lawbreaking. "Okay," he said, returning. "You dropped the books and beat it THB ADVENTURES when I hollered. I didn't see your face, but I'm out looking if I can spot you, you understand? Now you just go to Thompson's on Monroe. I'll be right behind." I set off, drying my face with my silk muffler. In the cafeteria I carried my cup from the counter to a table. Presently he came too, and sat down. He considered me for a while; he had gotten to be wrinkled at the eyes, sallow, shrewd, stillish, a commentator. Yet on both sides, as much as the circumstances let it be, there was happiness at meeting again. "Was you scared in the door?" he finally said. "Jesus, yes--what do you think?" I said, smiling. "Same jerk as you always were. A train could hit you and you'd think it was just swell and get up with smiles, like knee-deep in June. What's all the happy joy this time?" "Well, I'm glad it was you, not a real dick." "I am a real dick, only not for you, you fool. I had to chase you. I was standing with the buyer and you came right smack in our sights, two yards' range. So what could I do but go for you? But what are you swiping books for? I thought they beat it out of us both at the same time when we worked that Santa Claus deal. My old man almost killed me. He almost killed me."?;?;' "And he made a detective of you?" "He? Shit! I go where they put me and do what they tell me." I knew his mother was dead; that, limping and corpulent, she had sunk into coffin and gone down to grave. But what had happened to the others? "What about your dad now?" "Putzin' on. He got married again after Ma died. It turned out he had a romance from the old country lasting about forty years. Isn't that something? While he had eight kids by Ma and the woman had four by her husband, both eating their hearts out with love. She became a widow, so they went and got married. What's the matter, you surprised?" "Why, yes. I remember your father always being