'I guess it's their posture. That holier than thou attitude that smacks more of a performance than anything else.'
'I thought you said it was heartfelt.'
I hate being caught in a contradiction. 'Have you ever thought about fucking yourself, Leonard?'
'Constantly. Want to have a relationship with a good man, figure I'd be prime pick. But my dick's about a half- inch too short to get the job done. I like to feel it all the way up in my liver.'
'You through jacking with me now?'
'Almost. All I got to say is you can't be a professional bleeding heart. Yeah, things are better for blacks and women and gays, but it was the blacks and women and gays that did it, not fuck-ups like this bunch. Whites and straights came along to give help, all right, after the blacks said 'enough' and got their heads busted, and it's the same for the gays and the women. The whites and straights, they control things, and they could have changed it anytime.'
'Not all us whites and straights are in a position of power, or haven't you noticed?'
'Let's save this for next time we're on Meet The Nation or something.'
'Gladly. I'm too cold to argue, and if I got up from here to kick your ass my foot would break off.'
'Or I'd break it off for you. Now that's settled, let's get out of here before the World Savers get up.'
Leonard looked at his watch. 'It's six o'clock and I'm hungry. Paco said there's a pretty good place for breakfast in town.'
'Maybe they got something here we could fix.'
'Nothing in the fridge but a bag of uncooked spaghetti and three beers. Cabinets are mostly empty, except for some roaches.'
We left without disturbing anyone, went out to Leonard's car, and it cranked after a scary moment of the starter Bendix clicking. As we drove away, I thought of Trudy and Howard in bed together and felt like Howard must have felt when she was with me.
Depressed.
I thought of them lying there, her waking up, giving herself to him before she got cleaned up and went off to work (wherever she worked) and he went to his job (if he had one). Then I imagined them coming home from a hard day, planning to steal money that was already stolen to use for some noble cause. Ozzie and Harriet of the sixties set.
I liked it. It was sweet. They were a great couple with high ideals.
I hoped it was so cold back there her vagina was frozen shut.
Sue me. I've got a juvenile streak.
Chapter 11
We drove in and found a little cafe called Bill's Kettle, the place Paco recommended. It hadn't been there when I was growing up. Back then that spot had been a magazine and cigar store. The lady who ran it used to let me read comics off the rack and not buy them. I was the only one she let do that.
The building the cafe was in, though it had to be considerably younger than the one the magazine store had occupied, looked much older. It appeared to be held up with nothing more than the smoke and grease from the kitchen. The huge plate glass was so grimy you could hardly see movement behind it. Someone had made an attempt to wipe it clean on the outside but hadn't bothered rinsing the soap; it looked like the end result of a Halloween prank.
The inside looked no better. The floors were scuffed and dirty and tables had been poorly wiped. There were two men at one table eating. They eyed us and nodded as we came in. In the back a young man sat staring into space, sipping coffee.
There was a fat blond woman in thinning green stretch pants at the counter. She gave us a quick glance and went back to her coffee and cigarette, said something to the thin, oily-headed man behind the counter. He managed a laugh, like a leukemia patient trying to be cheery.
We sat and kept our arms off the table. The fat blond woman got down off the stool and came over with menus. Pretty sneaky, the help blending in with the clientele that way.
We ordered, and about the time our meal arrived, Paco came in. He had on faded khakis and a blue baseball cap today. The cap hid some of the ugliness of his head. No one stared; they all worked at not doing that, and you could tell.
He saw us, smiled, and the smile was nice; the only part of him that wasn't ruined.
He came over and Leonard made room and Paco sat down beside him. We went through the casual greeting bullshit you go through, and the waitress shrugged off the stool and came over with her cigarette in her mouth and asked around it for Paco's order, then went away.
'She didn't even bother with a menu,' Leonard said.
'I always get the same thing,' Paco said. 'Pancakes. Her asking me is simply a ritual.'
Surprise. The food was great. I was wiping up the last of my eggs with a piece of toast when Paco smiled at me and said, 'Place looks like a toilet, but what comes out of the kitchen could pass for ambrosia. They got someone back there knows what cooking is all about.'
When Paco's order came and he finished eating, I said, 'How do you live, you and the guys? Trudy the only one working?'
'I don't get too many indoor jobs with this face,' Paco said. 'Nobody in a store wants to look at me all day. I do some jobs here and there. Move across country doing different things, farm and yard work mostly. Sometimes things that aren't legal or aren't quite legal. Right now, you could say I'm between jobs.
