dog-turd is still a dog-turd, but a ref is still a ref, am I right?'
'You sure are,' Tell said, pulling open his desk drawer to make sure his Dead Beats cassette, unplayed since Janning had given it to him on the last day of the mix, was still there.
'So what are you doing?'
'Looking for a job.'
'You want to work with me again? Daltrey's new album. Starts in two weeks.'
'Christ, yes!'
The money would be good, but it was more than that; following The Dead Beats and two weeks of Karate Masters of Massacre, working with Roger Daltrey would be like coming into a warm place on a cold night. The man might turn out to be an utter shit, but at least he could sing. And working with Janning again would be good. 'Where?'
'Same old stand. Tabori.'
'I'm there.'
Roger Daltrey could not only sing, he turned out to be a tolerably nice guy. Tell thought the next three or four weeks would be good ones. He had a job, he had a production credit on an album that had popped onto the Billboard charts at number forty-one (and 'Diving in the Dirt' was up to number seventeen and still climbing), and he felt safe about the rent for the first time since he had come to New York from Pennsylvania four years ago.
It was June, trees were in full leaf, girls were in short skirts, and the world seemed a fine place to be. Tell felt this way on his first day back at work for Paul Janning until approximately 1:45 P.M. Then he walked into the third floor bathroom, saw the same white sneakers under the door of stall one, and all his good feelings suddenly collapsed.
They are not the same.
They were, though. That single empty eyelet was the clearest point of identification, but everything else about them was also the same. Exactly the same, and that included their positions.
The only difference was that now there were more dead flies around them.
He went slowly into the third stall, 'his' stall, lowered his pants, and sat down. He wasn't surprised to find the urge which had brought him there had entirely departed only sat there, listening for sounds. Little shifting noises. The rattle of a newspaper. Perhaps a little grunt of effort. Hell, even a fart would do.
There was no sound.
That's because I'm in here alone, Tell thought. Except, that is, for the dead guy in that first stall.
The outer door banged briskly open. Tell almost screamed.
Someone hummed his way over to the urinals. As he did, an explanation occurred to Tell and he relaxed. It was so simple it was absurd ... and undoubtedly correct. He glanced at his watch and saw it was 1:47.
A regular man is a happy man, his father used to say. Tell's father had been a taciturn man, and that (along with Clean your hands and then clean your plate) had been one of his few aphorisms. If regularity really did mean happiness, then Tell supposed he was a happy man. And if you were regular, he supposed that urge came on at about the same time every day ... at least it did with
him. Sneakers was just on the same schedule, that was all, and the sneakers were always under the door of stall one because that was 'his' stall just as number three was Tell's.
If you needed to pass the stalls to get to the urinals, you would have seen that stall empty lots of times, and with different shoes under it lots of other times. And what are the chances a body could stay undiscovered in a business building toilet stall for ...
He worked out the time he'd last been there in his mind.
... for nine weeks, give or take?
No chance at all was the answer to that one. He could believe the janitors weren't too fussy about cleaning the stalls-all those dead flies-but they would have to check on the toilet paper supply every day or two, right) And even if you left those things out, dead people started to smell after a while, right? God knew this wasn't the sweetest- smelling place on earth-and following a visit from the fat guy who worked down the hall at Janus Music it was almost uninhabitable-but surely the stink of a dead body would be different.
How do you know? Did you ever smell a decomposing body?
No, but he was pretty sure he'd know what it was if he did. Logic was logic and regularity was regularity and that was the end of it. The guy was probably a pencilpusher from Janus or a writer for Snappy Kards, at the other side of the floor.
Roses are red and violets are blue!
You thought I was dead but that wasn't true!
I just deliver my mail at the same time as you.
That sucks, Tell thought, and uttered a wild little laugh. The fellow who had banged the door open, almost startling him into a scream, had progressed to the washbasins. Now the splashing-lathering sound of him washing his hands stopped briefly. Tell could imagine him listening, wondering who was laughing behind one of the closed stall doors, wondering if it was a joke, a dirty picture, or if the man was just crazy. There were, after all, crazy people in New York. Lots of them. You saw them all the time, talking to themselves and laughing for no appreciable reason ... the way Tell had just now.
Tell tried to imagine Sneakers also listening and couldn't.
Suddenly he didn't feel like laughing anymore.
Suddenly he just felt like getting out of there.
