snow where it had been dropped by someone paying off a cab, a coin trodden underfoot like a pebble. He watched the people who hurried past as well; it seemed possible—indeed, it seemed likely—that one of them would require some sudden service. He saw himself snatching a child from beneath the wheels of a truck for a fortune, collaring a runaway dog for a dollar.
His fingers toyed with the three locker keys in his pocket, but he did not go directly to the bus station. The branch post office that had served Free’s house while that house yet stood was only a block out of the way; he waited patiently in line there to reach a window. “You were supposed to hold my mail,” he told the bearded young clerk. “The house was torn down.” He gave the address.
The clerk vanished somewhere in the back of the post office. Barnes could feel the accusing eyes of the people behind him on the nape of his neck.
“Nothing,” the bearded clerk said, returning. “When was your last delivery?”
“Day before yesterday.”
“Well, there was nothing yesterday, then. You got a new address?”
“Not yet,” Barnes said. “Just hold anything that comes for me.”
There were stamp machines in the lobby of the post office. He felt in the coin return of each, hoping for an overlooked dime or quarter.
That gave him an idea. Outside, he stopped at each curbside phone booth he passed. Sometimes, because he thought people were looking at him, he pretended to make calls, dropping imaginary money into the slot and groping in the cold metal receptacle as though the call had not gone through, as though he had failed to reach his party, as indeed he had.
The Greyhound station was a gem set in a coronet of cheap restaurants. It blazed with light and seemed designed for thousands of surging people, vivacious and gaily dressed, not for the thin, exhausted woman who slept with her exhausted infant on her lap (both worn out with weeping) or the red-headed sailor who had contrived with drunken ingenuity to sprawl across parts of several benches, or for Osgood M. Barnes with his creaseless trousers and thin-soled, frozen shoes.
There were two sample cases, and he had put them in two lockers because one would not hold them both. The lockers would be good now until evening, though he might, perhaps, carry everything to the Consort and smuggle them up to seven seventy-seven. For a moment he considered it, but he did not feel certain there would be anyone there to let him in. Candy would certainly be gone. It seemed likely that Stubb would be as well. Madame Serpentina might be there, but she might not. He tried to recall which case he had put in which locker, then realized he was no longer sure even of which of the three held his personal effects. In the end he chose a key at random, and when he swung back the locker door, he saw with pleasure the rectangular black bulk of a sample case. Thanks to his breakfast, it seemed a trifle lighter than it had the night before.
He had never called upon the restaurants around the bus station. The chain fast-food outlets would be out of the question, but some of the diners might sell a few novelties, cards behind the counter, possibly a display on the cigar case. The only question was where to start. He glanced about at the exits, and in the process noticed a wizened man rolling up the grills that had protected his magazine stand. In half a minute Barnes was there, his sample case open beside the cash register
“Now here’s a nice item—dog collars that glow in the dark. Say you’ve got a black dog, like one of those toy poodles, for instance. When he goes out at night, you can’t see the little devil. Put one of these on him and you can spot him right away. Twenty-two fifty for the card; when you sell the last collar—at the price printed right on the card—you’ve made forty-five bucks.”
“No,” the wizened man said.
“Okay, here’s another one. This can’t miss; they sell like hotcakes every place we get them in. I’ve had customers call me begging me to get them more. It’s a rose, see? Just an ordinary plastic rose like you might wear in your buttonhole if you were dressed up. Just twist the stem, the petals open, and there’s a lovely, naked centerfold inside. Of course, if the customer wants to, he can take that out and put in any picture he wants. He can put in his girl’s picture and give it to her. Card of six costs you five ninety-nine, and you sell them for a buck ninety- eight each—a real high-profit item.”
“No.”
“Okay, look at this. In your location it can’t miss. You get lots of mothers through here with their kids, right? Sometimes they got two or three kids, right? They’re going to be on the bus three or four hours, and the mother’s going to go crazy. The mother can buy
The wizened man leaned forward. “I used to have that one with the twisted nails when I was a kid.”
“So why not order a card? You can keep the nails for old times’ sake, and you’ll still stand to make over six bucks clear when you sell the last puzzle.”
Breath of mingled bourbon and pizza touched Barnes’s face. “Say, can I look at them?”
Barnes glanced around; it was the sailor. “Certainly, sir. There’s hours of amusement in every one.”
The puzzles were hung on tabs punched from the cardboard. After blinking and poking several with a long finger, the sailor selected a pencil with a cord through a hole near the eraser. “How does this work?”
The buttons of the sailor’s pea jacket were all unfastened. Barnes pulled at the uppermost buttonhole and thrust the pencil through it, then pulled the cord tight.
The sailor pushed the pencil back through the buttonhole, but the cord was too short for him to take it out entirely. “Hey,” he said, “that’s great. How much?”
“Like it says on the card, just seventy-nine cents.”
