| “Can I git you anything else, Podner?” “No. Well – yes. A little more coffee.” “I can rustle that up.” It was hard to see in here. There were ropes on the wall. Ropes and horns. They looked different. But everyone changed in Chicago. “Here you go. That it?” “One more thing.” He took a picture out of his sleeve. “You ever seen her?” “Say, what is this?” “It’s a picture of a woman,” he said. “Yeah. She’s pretty. She in trouble?” “I don’t know.” There was a man in the back in a cowboy outfit, watching them. He looked like a manager but Joe hadn’t seen him when he came in. He hadn’t seen him at all. “What makes you think I’d know her?” “She had this matchbook.” “So did Eleanor Johnson.” “I – I don’t know any Eleanor Johnson. She said she worked here. Not too long ago.” “You sure it was this one? There are lots of Covered Wagons. One in St. Paul. One in Mindeanapolis.” “Mindea – what?” “Mindeanapolis Indesota. Try there.” “I don’t know where that is.” “Ask Jane,” the waitress said. She had horns now. “You sure it was her? Because everyone changes in Chicago.” Joe woke, sweating. He looked at the clock: 2:40. The last time he’d looked, the clock said 2:30. He sank back in bed, wondering if he was going to spend the entire night like this, diving deep into fever dreams and thrashing to the surface over and over again. What was that last one about? He got up and turned the lights on. He felt horrible. He reached for his smokes, thinking: can’t feel any worse. He lit the cigarette, coughed, noting how the cigarette tasted different – they always tasted odd when you had a bad cold. Not a bad taste, either. Variety, spice of life. Where did he get this bug? The waitress, probably. She had red eyes at half-mast on Saturday. He’d gone to the office to get some papers, stopped down at the lobby grill to have a cup of coffee and read the paper. “She came by Friday,” the waitress said. “Here.” She put an envelope on the counter. “For Joe,” it read. Not to Joe. For Joe. For some reason that seemed important. He opened it up. There were three twenty dollar bills and a matchbook from some joint in Chicago. No note. Earlier that week he’d laid low. On Monday he’d asked the waitress if she’d noticed the redhead who came in now and then. “Sure. She’s something. I’d kill for skin like that but you burn, and I like the beach. But I wouldn’t complain.” “Can you give her this?” The waitress looked at the envelope in Joe’s hand. For Jane it said. “Sure. Jane, huh. Okay.” The envelope had a check for a hundred dollars. He’d wrapped it in a piece of paper on which he’d written for the friend. The one Jane been telling him about. The one with the small but worrisome problem that bothered her so. He hadn’t come in the rest of the week. And now here he was. Sixty bucks. He didn't know what to make of that, exactly. “She say anything?” he asked the waitress. “No. But – Joe?” “Yeah?” “She had a suitcase. A small one, though. Three days. Four tops.” Joe had a piece of pie – on the house, the waitress insisted – then he'd walked to the Terminal Tower. He waited in line at a ticket counter. Only two were open. The line moved slow; a big broad woman with a ridiculous hat – tall feathers, fake grapes – was haranguing the clerk about the lack of proper accommodations on the last train she had taken. Behind her was a man who didn’t move; he might as well have been carved out of thick pink air. He bought a ticket and slid away like someone in a dream who’s bored of his role. He'd felt his throat tickle; dry air, that was it, nothing worse. “Can I help you,” the ticketmaster had said. “Where can I go, one way, for forty dollars?” Joe asked. The ticketmaster leaned back, looked at Joe, then slid a timetable under the grill. “Coast to coast, friend,” he said. “Border to border. Unless you want a room.” “What?” “Forty-six fifty for that,” he'd said. “And you change in Chicago.” |
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