182
GEORGE DEAUX
The professor laughs with them to keep the cover story intact.
Because the time is not quite yet.
The salesman with his head in a cap of white foam lumbers out
of the chair and squats on a stool while the lean man works over him
with tubes and sprays and the pink rubber massage instruments.
"Take me now," he says. "I sell . .." Water gurgles over his product.
Lost all in bubbles. He shakes his head and continues: "You can tell
the bubbles of living in a country by how much of our bubbles they
consume."
The shoeshine boy shakes his broom in the air, bald of bristles.
"Just look at this fucken thing, Ed. Two weeks old already. When
you gonna buy me a decent fucken broom, Ed?"
"Watch your mouth, you little coon,
I'll
sic Charlie on you
tromp your black ass down a peg."
Charlie is the professor's barber and he scowls at the boy. He
menace him with a squint-eye stare.
"The trick is to create a desire," the
Times
says. "Where would
you be if you had to sell that stuff on its merits?"
The fat man rises out of the sink, water and foam falling about
his shoulders and onto the floor, like Neptune from the sea; the
Master of Commerce, the great bubbles salesman shoves three fingers
into the air and announces, "Business made this country, sir, and
selling made business. How else do you think we got to be the center
of the world? It was people like me you got to thank for that."
The man in the first chair shrugs and returns to his paper, while
the barber combs his hair, holding the comb with his little finger stiff
like an old maid with her tea.
"Hey, Charlie, gimme one of your Marlboros, willya?" The
shine boy leans on his broom and Claude looks him over:
mon
semblable,
he thinks,
mon frere.
About sixteen years old, he has the
old man's slouch, walks as
if
his feet were tender. But he's got a heavy
process on his head and a flash in his eye. Claude imagines the blade
in the hip pocket,
mon semblable.
Black.
The Worm!
"Smoke your own one time, willya, Sam?"
"Come on, Charlie. I'm all out and I gotta take a dump."
"Jesus Christ, what a pervert!"
The boy sticks the cigarette in his teeth and shuffles out.
