The Postman Always Rings Twice - James M. Cain [10]
"Hey, Frank!"
It was the Greek, running across the street at me before I had really got out the door.
"Well Frank, you old son a gun, where you been, put her there, why you run away from me just a time I hurt my head I need you most?"
We shook hands. He still had a bandage around his head and a funny look in his eyes, but he was all dressed up in a new suit, and had a black hat cocked over on the side of his head, and a purple necktie, and brown shoes, and his gold watch chain looped across his vest, and a big cigar in his hand.
"Well, Nick! How you feeling, boy?"
"Me, I feel fine, couldn't feel better if was right out a the can, but why you run out on me? I sore as hell at you, you old son a gun."
"Well, you know me, Nick. I stay put a while, and then I got to ramble."
"You pick one hell of a time to ramble. What you do, hey? Come on, you don't do nothing, you old son a gun, I know you, come on over while I buy'm steaks I tell you all about it."
"You alone?"
"Don't talk so dumb, who the hell you think keep a place open now you run out on me, hey? Sure I'm alone. Me a Cora never get to go out together now, one go, other have to stay."
"Well then, let's walk over."
It took him an hour to buy the steaks, he was so busy telling me how his skull was fractured, how the docs never saw a fracture like it, what a hell of a time he's had with his help, how he's had two guys since I left and he fired one the day after he hired him, and the other one skipped after three days and took the inside of the cash register with him, and how he'd give anything to have me back.
"Frank, I tell you what. We go to Santa Barbara tomorrow, me a Cora. Hell boy, we got to step out a little, hey? We go see a fiesta there, and you come with us. You like that, Frank? You come with us, we talk about you come back a work for me. You like a fiesta a Santa Barbara?"
"Well, I hear it's good."
"Is a girls, is a music, is a dance in streets, is swell. Come on, Frank, what you say?"
"Well, I don't know."
"Cora be sore as hell at me if I see you and no bring you out. Maybe she treat you snotty, but she think you fine fellow, Frank. Come on, we all three go. We have a hell of a time."
"O.K. If she's willing, it's a go."
There were eight or ten people in the lunchroom when we got there, and she was back in the kitchen, washing dishes as fast as she could, to get enough plates to serve them.
"Hey. Hey Cora, look. Look who I bring."
"Well for heaven's sake. Where did he come from?"
"I see'm today a Glendale. He go to Santa Barbara with us."
"Hello, Cora. How you been?"
"You're quite a stranger around here."
She wiped her hands quick, and shook hands, but her hand was soapy. She went out front with an order, and me and the Greek sat down. He generally helped her with the orders, but he was all hot to show me something, and he let her do it all alone. It was a big scrapbook, and in the front of it he had pasted his naturalization certificate, and then his wedding certificate, and then his license to do business in Los Angeles County, and then a picture of himself in the Greek Army, and then a picture of him and Cora the day they got married, and then all the clippings about his accident. Those clippings in the regular papers, if you ask me, were more about the cat than they were about him, but anyway they had his name in them, and how he had been brought to the Glendale Hospital, and was expected to recover. The one in the Los Angeles Greek paper, though, was more about him than about the cat, and had a picture