"Carlos, listen ..."
"Fredo, give 'im the fucking money."
The goon approached, a hideous, blubbery smile on his face. He reached out his fat fingers and put the bills in Joey's shirt pocket, the same pocket as his sunglasses. The gesture was actually rather gentle, yet it felt to Joey that talons had snapped out and were clawing at his heart.
"There," said Carlos. "That's what you've cost me, just by coming down here. So do yourself a favor and don't ever cost me one more dollar. You got that, Mr. Goldman?"
— 6 —
Joey had not been able to remember the retreat through the laundromat. The first thing he recalled was standing on the sidewalk, watching the low red sunlight bounce off his smashed windshield and throw rainbows onto the Caddy's old upholstery. He reached for his sunglasses, and when he pulled them out of his shirt pocket, the hundred and twenty dollars fell onto the street. He hesitated a moment, thinking that it would be a suave gesture to let the money lie there. Then he bent down and plucked the bills off the hot asphalt, hoping no one would notice.
Back at the compound, he'd made a rum and tonic, sat down with it near the pool, and noted in himself a dangerous desire. It was the desire just to sit there and do nothing. When things went badly, it made sitting near water with a cocktail seem absolutely heavenly, saner than any possible action. Then, too, there was the tropical thing. Up north people kept busy to keep warm, kept moving so as not to get trampled. Here it was pleasantest to stay still. This was not something you decided but something you realized through your pores. The air was the same temperature as your skin. It felt good. Soft breezes whispered of the timeless appeal of being a lazy bum.
The only problem was the money.
That, and the way Sandra looked when she got home from work—pale, dressed in long-sleeved business blouses that were too warm, her light eyes tired behind the big square glasses, her fingertips gray- green from counting out fresh twenties. He'd greet her, tan, in a bathing suit, and after hello there'd be a pregnant silence. Problem was, anything Sandra said—What's new? How was your day?—sounded to Joey like a reproach. Not that Sandra meant it that way. She'd sit down on the edge of Joey's lounge chair and pull her skirt primly over her knees. She'd take deep breaths of the jasmine and frangipani, getting the stale aftertaste of air-conditioning out of her lungs, and she'd try to make civil conversation. Joey, like a sulky teenager whose true frustration is that he has nothing to hide, would seem to be hiding behind one-word answers. His day was fine. Nothing was new.
The thing was, Joey would have liked to talk to her, but where he was from, there were a lot of things you just didn't discuss with your girlfriend. What's new? Well, I tried to take over the numbers racket today. How was your day? Lousy—a three-hundred-pound Cuban spit fruit on my shoe. No, this was not stuff you told your girlfriend, only your pals. But that assumed you had pals, and who were Joey's buddy-boys down here? Peter and Claude? So Joey mostly kept mum. As soon as he could, he moved the conversation away from himself.
"Sandra," he'd say, "those clothes, they're too hot. You must be like sweltering. Why don't you buy your-self some new ones?"
By reflex, Sandra would run her hand along the fabric of her skirt. "This is O.K. for now. After I get a few paychecks, maybe I'll go shopping."
"And then we gotta get you tan."
Sandra gave a little laugh. "Never happen." Then she looked down at the still blue water of the swimming pool, looked at it as if it were a thousand miles away instead of at her feet. "I wouldn't mind some time to lay around, though."
There it was, thought Joey. Not an accusation, not even a complaint. Just the truth. Joey was not holding up his end, and he knew it.
So, a couple of evenings after his meeting with Carlos, he went downtown to look into the pimping business.
He wasn't going to be a pimp. He had standards about that kind of thing—though it was true that, under the pressures of idleness and exile, he could already feel his standards beginning to erode. Still, pimps (by which Joey meant New York pimps) were an unseemly and amateurish lot. They took drugs and wore idiotic hats, they squandered assets and drowned themselves in after-shave, their business acumen was in their dicks and they had no feel for detail work. They badly needed organization, and that's where Joey would come in—as a sort of pimp's pimp, to discipline them like they disciplined the women. It could be a good thing for everybody, Joey thought. Territory could be fairly assigned. Arguments and slashings could be kept to a minimum. Everyone would earn more and the public would be guaranteed a quality product.