“Any kind of work?”
“Right now, yes. You got something for me?”
“Naw. Can’t pay my rent as it is.”
“You’re just curious, then?”
“Yeah. You want to go to that circus?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Is this a trick question too?”
“Guy put up the flyer gave me a couple tickets for letting him have the space on the board there. I’d give them to you for stacking some books. I don’t really want to do it.”
“Stack the books or give me the tickets?”
“Neither one. But you stack them Harlequins for me, I’ll give you the tickets.”
I looked at my wrist where my watch used to be before I pawned it. “You got the time?”
She looked at her watch. “Two o’clock.”
“I like the deal,” I said, “but the circus starts at three and I wanted to take my daughter.”
Martha shook out one of her delicate little cigarettes and lit it, studied me. It made me feel funny. Like I was a shit smear on a laboratory slide. Most I’d ever talked to her before was when I asked where the new detective novels were and she grumped around and finally told me, as if it was a secret she’d rather have kept.
“Tell you what,” Martha said, “I’ll give you the tickets now, and you come back tomorrow morning and put up the books for me.”
“That’s nice of you,” I said.
“Not really. I know where you live, and you don’t come put up my romance novels tomorrow, I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”
I looked for a smile, but I didn’t see any.
“That’s one way to do business,” I said.
“The only way. Here.” She opened a drawer and pulled out the tickets and I went over and took them. “By the way, what’s your name, boy? See you in here all the time, but don’t know your name.”
Boy? Was she talking to me?
“Plebin Cook,” I said. “And I’ve always assumed you’re Martha.”
“Martha ain’t much of a name, but it beats Plebin. Plebin’s awful. I was named that I’d get it changed. Call yourself most anything and it’d be better than Plebin.”
“I’ll tell my poor, old, gray-haired mother what you said.”
“You must have been an accident and that’s why she named you that. You got an older brother or sister?”
“A brother.”
“How much older?”
Earning these tickets was getting to be painful. “Sixteen years.”
“What’s his name?”
“Jim.”
“There you are. You were an accident. Jim’s a normal name. Her naming you Plebin is unconscious revenge. I read about stuff like that in one of those psychology books came in. Called
I had a vision of shoving those circus tickets down her throat, but I restrained myself for Jasmine’s sake. “No joke? Well, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Eight o’clock sharp. Go stacking ‘em after nine, gets so hot in here you’ll faint. A Yankee visiting some relatives came in here and did just that. Found him about closing time over there by the historicals and the Gothic Romances. Had to call an ambulance to come get him. Got out of here with one of my Gothics clutched in his hand. Didn’t pay me a cent for it.”
“And people think a job like this is pretty easy.”
“They just don’t know,” Martha said.
I said thanks and goodbye and started to turn away.
“Hey,” Martha said. “You decide to get your name changed, they’ll do stuff like that for you over at the court house.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
I didn’t want any more of Martha, so I went over to the drug store and used the payphone there and called Jasmine. Her mother answered.
“Hi, Connie,” I said.
“Get a job yet?”
“No,” I said. “But I’m closing in on some prospects.”
“Bet you are. What do you want?”
“Jasmine in?”
“You want to talk to her?”
No, I thought. Just ask for the hell of it. But I said, “If I may.”
The phone clattered on something hard, a little more violently than necessary, I thought. A moment later Jasmine came on the line. “Daddy.”
“Hi, Baby Darling. Want to go to the circus?”
“The circus?”
“The Jim Dandy Circus is in town, and I’ve got tickets.”
“Yeah. Really.” She sounded as if I’d asked her if she wanted to have her teeth cleaned.
“You used to like the circuses.”
“When I was ten.”
“That was just seven years ago.”
“That’s a long time.”
“Only when you’re seventeen. Want to go or not? I’ll even spring for a hot dog.”
“You know what they make hot dogs out of?”
“I try not to think about it. I figure I get some chili on it, whatever’s in the dog dies.”
“Guess you want me to come by and get you?”
“That would be nice. Circus starts at three. That’s less than an hour away.”
“All right, but Daddy?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t call me Baby Darling in public. Someone could hear.”
“We can’t have that.”
“Really, Daddy. I’m getting to be a woman now. It’s… I don’t know… kind of…”
“Hokey?”
“That’s it.”
“Gottcha.”
The circus was not under the big top, but was inside the Mud Creek Exhibition center, which Mud Creek needs about as much as I need a second dick. I don’t use the first one as it is. Oh, I pee out of it, but you know what I mean.
The circus was weak from the start, but Jasmine seemed to have a pretty good time, even if the performing bears were so goddamned old I thought we were going to have to go down there and help them out of their cages. The tiger act was scary, because it looked as if the tigers were definitely in control, but the overweight Ringmaster got out alive, and the elephants came on, so old and wrinkled they looked like drunks in baggy pants. That was the best of it. After that, the dog act, conducted by Waldo the Great, got out of hand, and his performing poodles went X-rated, and the real doo-doo hit the fan.
Idiot trainer had apparently put one of the bitches to work while she was in heat, and in response, the male dogs jumped her and started poking, the biggest male finally winning the honors and the other five running about as if their brains had rolled out of their ears.
Waldo the Great went a little nuts and started kicking the fornicating dogs, but they wouldn’t let up. The male dog kept his goober in the slot even when Waldo’s kicks made his hind legs leave the ground. He didn’t even
