The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow [98]
but at least I was making expenses and Simon didn't have to support me. Of course he beefed because I had quit Renling. How was he going to marry if he had to keep Mama by himself? I said, "You and Cissy can move in with her." But this made him look black, and I understood that Cissy wasn't having any of that, the old flat and Mama to take care of. "Well, Simon, you know I don't want to stick you," I said, "and that I'll try my best." We were having coffee in Raklios's, and my pot of paint was on the table and my gloves on top of that. pen at the seams, the gloves showed how I had lost my grip on prosperity. And I was getting dirty, for a salesman, for whose appearance ere are laws which are supposed to guarantee a certain firmness of personality. I had fallen below the standard, unable to afford cleaning and repairing, nor was able to spare much feeling for it. The way I was living was becoming crude, and I was learning some squatter lessons. Up in my room the heat didn't reach, and I wore my coat and socks at night. In the morning I went down to the drugstore to warm up on a cup of coffee and lay out my route for the day. I carried my razor in my pocket and shaved downtown with the free hot water, liquid soap, and paper towels of public toilets, and I ate in YMCA cafeterias or one-arm joints and beat checks as often as I could. Vigorous at nine, my hope ran out by noon, and then one of my hardships was that I had no place of rest. I could try to pass the afternoon in Einhorn's new office; he was accustomed to people on his bench, outside the railing, who had no special tasks. But I who had worked for him had to be doing something, and he would send me on his business. So that I might as well have been on my own, once I was already on the streetcar. Besides I had an obligation to Simon that would not let me loaf, although simply to move around was in itself of no advantage. It was not only for me that being moored wasn't permitted; there was general motion, as of people driven from angles and corners into the open, by places being valueless and inhospitable to them. In the example of the Son of Man having no place to lay His head; or belonging to the world in general; except that the illuminated understanding of this was absent, nobody much guessing what was up on the face of the earth. I, with my can of paint, no more than others. And once I was under way, streetcars weren't sufficient, nor Chicago large enough to hold me. Coming out of an El station one day, when the snow was running off, at the tail end of winter, I ran into Joe German whom I hadn't seen since after the robbery. He was in a good blue coat of narrow style, and a freshly blocked fedora, dented like a soft bread by the fingers. He was buying magazines, out of the wall of them that hung by the stand. His nose was raised up and he looked ruddy and well, benefited by a good breakfast and the cold morning--although it would have been more like his habit of life to have come from an all-night poker game. Sizing me up, with my sample paint can, it was plain to him that I was having it bad. I had the face of someone pretty much beat. "What's this racket you're in?" he asked me, and when I explained it he said, but not in a triumphing way, "Sucker!" He was certainly right, and I didn't put much force into defending myself. "It's a way of meeting people," I answered, "and something may open up one of these days.". "Yes " he said, "a deep hole. What if you do meet people--you think somebody is going to do something for you because you're a pretty boy? Give you a big break? These days they take care of their relatives first. And what have you got in the way of relatives?" I didn't have much. Five Properties was still driving his milk truck, but I didn't mean to ask him for a job. Coblin had lost everythin except his paper route in the crash. Anyway, I hadn't seen much of either of them since the Commissioner's funeral. "Come and have some cheese and pie on me," he said, and we went into a restaurant. "What's up with you?" I said, for I didn't want to ask explicitly;