“I don’t blame you a moment.”
“I still need my pay.”
“And you gonna get it, every cent. But right now you got to be a little patient because it isn’t so good. I can’t pay I don’t get the money from Olindas Estates. And where is Olindas now? Do they pay me? No.”
“Nestor, you are Olindas. You’re forty percent of Olindas.”
“That’s only forty percent,” he said. “My friend, I assure you I am completely and totally and absolutely broke at this moment we’re speaking.”
“I’ve seen where you live, Nestor. Have you seen where I live?”
“I assure you it is impossible right now for me to pay everybody asking.”
“I’m not asking you to pay everybody,” I said, trying to get my breathing under control. “I’m asking you to pay me. Seventeen dollars a day times thirteen days. No, I quit early today. Call it twelve days. Two hundred and four dollars. This isn’t the first time you’ve tried to short me, Nestor.”
“I hear,” he said patiently, “what you are saying. Do you hear what I am saying?”
“I did the work, Nestor. I want to be paid for it.”
“Is that all you can say the same thing over again? I heard you already, your pay. I am trying to talk to you like a reasonable civilize human being. Can I do that, you think?”
“Nestor,” I said.
The first time you use a jackhammer, your hands are so swollen at night that you can’t close them. You can barely pick a fork up off the table. That’s the way my whole head felt just then. That’s how it takes me. It’s as if the front of my brain was swelling, locking up, and all I could think was,
“Lissen, what do you want,” he said. “Think about what you really want. You want me to call the cops, that what you want?”
“Yeah, you want the cops here, Nestor. You want them here real bad. Nestor, I’m telling you. Give me my goddamn money, all right?”
“And I am telling you, you are a goddamn big stupid
All right. It was out of my hands now. Anyway, that’s what I usually tell myself. The room was crammed full with rolls of tarpaper, coils of wire, cartons of bathroom tile. There was a two-foot length of heavy chain on the corner of Nestor’s desk, an open padlock hooked into the last link. I unhooked the padlock, picked up the chain, and came around the desk. “Oh, now you’re gonna be a big tough guy,” he said. “Now you’re gonna scare me. Big tough guy. Now you’re gonna threaten.” I scooped him out of his chair, mashed him one-handed against the wall, and wound the chain around his neck. His little hat fell to the floor. I slipped my fingers in between the chain and the side of his neck, gripped the chain, and twisted. Nestor made a squeaking noise back in his throat, and then he made no noise at all except for the scuffling of his feet against the floor and the clacking of his teeth as he opened and closed his jaws. His bulging eyes didn’t leave mine. They seemed to be searching for some sign that I was somehow kidding. I loosened the chain and said, “I want my pay, Nestor.”
“You’re crazy!” he croaked. His voice whistled in his throat. “Crazy!”
I tightened the chain again and he was quiet. He was staring into my eyes, and then he was staring past them. His little belly heaved convulsively and his fingers scratched at my chest. “I want my pay,” I said.
I loosened the chain again.
“Crazy! Crazy!” he whispered.
“Two-hundred and four dollars,” I said, towing him over to the desk by the chain. He scrabbled in a drawer and pulled out a checkbook. I took it and dropped it back in the drawer. “Checks can be stopped, Nestor.”
He pulled his wallet from his breast pocket and threw it on the desk. He began to curse me in his whistling, broken voice. I tightened up a little and he stopped. “Count it for me,” I said.
He had a hundred and thirteen dollars. I put it in my pocket. “All I got!” he shrieked. “z’S all I got!”
“Ninety-one dollars more, Nestor. Halfway there. Where’s the petty cash?”
He jerked open a desk drawer and threw a small lock-box on the desk. He pulled out a small key, unlocked it with trembling fingers, and thrust the box toward me. It skidded off the desk and spilled onto the floor.
“Pick it up,” I told him.
He got down on his hands and knees and began scooping the money up and flinging it on the desk and chair, cursing me all the while in Spanish and English and maybe a few other languages. He was terrified of me, but he couldn’t seem to stop cursing me. I knew how he felt. I let go of the chain and it slithered to the floor and landed with a clunk. I didn’t see any singles on the desk, so I picked up four twenties and three fives and put them in my pocket. “Okay,” I said. “Now we’re quits.”
He just sat there in a scatter of money, holding his throat and weeping. I’d expected a bald spot under the hat, but he had a nice head of hair. I set his hat back on his head. “See you, Nestor,” I said.
He didn’t look at me as I left. He was busy weeping. I’m not sure he knew I’d been there anymore. I’m not sure he remembered what had hurt him.
Back then I lived at the Harmon Court Motel, out on Harmon, near Paige. The place was right behind the Sun-Glo billboard, which was something of a local landmark. The Sun-Glo Girl was seventy-five feet long and lay around all day on an elbow and a hip. Her job was to lie there, smiling and brushing back her hair. From the front she was an awfully healthy-looking girl, but from my window all you could see was the plywood back of her, propped up by iron struts. It was still a pretty healthy profile. The Court was usually half-empty, but it didn’t cost much to keep open, and I guess tearing the place down was more work than somebody was in the mood to do. My room was the last one past the pool. It was one of two deluxe rooms that had a kitchenette in the corner, and I got a percentage off my rent in exchange for handyman work. That was the theory, anyway.
When I got home from Nestor’s office, I sorted the money out on the dresser: twenties, tens, fives, and ones. Two hundred and eight dollars. I added the money Rebecca had given me and counted again. It made a decent little pile. It wouldn’t last, because I was behind seven weeks’ rent and two payments on my car, but it still felt nice between my fingers. It’s always good to get your pay. There was a mirror over the dresser, and I watched myself tuck the bills neatly in my wallet, and then I stood and looked at myself. I looked like the kind of guy who strangles contractors. I pulled off my clothes, turned the shower up as hot as I could bear, and stood under it awhile. I toweled off and had a drink from the bottle in the desk. I looked in the mirror again. Better. I put on some pants. Better all the time.
Aside from my clothes and groceries, the only things in that room I owned were the typewriter on the desk and a trunk where I kept my books. I didn’t keep the books out on shelves because I didn’t have any shelves, and because if girls saw them they wanted to talk about the pug who reads and wasn’t that wonderful.
I only buy books by people I wish I wrote like. I had some Hawthorne, some Irwin Shaw, and some John Dos Passos. I had some Hemingway, but he tires me, and if we knew each other we’d have to fight. I had some Flannery O’Connor, but she makes me want to put my head in the oven. I had some Chekhov. I don’t care about who’s a Russky. If Chekhov’s a Commie, then I wish I was one, too. But let me tell you, when it comes to writing about war, give me Stephen Crane. You can have Tolstoy. You can keep him. The son of a bitch never crossed out a sentence in his life.
I bought the typewriter with my mustering-out pay. My drafts and carbons I kept in the bottom left drawer. One drawer was enough, because I didn’t let them pile up. Every six months or so, I’d go through and read two or three pages at random of everything in the drawer, and if I didn’t see anything I liked, I’d chuck them. At any given time there’d be two or three screenplays, half a dozen treatments, and one or two short stories or pieces of stories. I threw most of it away, but I did keep a log with the names of everything I’d written and who I’d sent it to, so if I ever wanted to I could see what I’d been doing for the last nine years.
I had another drink, put on a sport shirt and loafers, and went to see Mattie Reece.
Reece’s office was a Quonset hut just inside the Republic studio gates. I found him where I always did,
