LITMIR.BIZ

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sorry and ashamed. Jessy is a most esti ... a most estimal—”

      “What about Percy Ball?”

      Harvey paused for a moment. He began to fumble through his pockets for cigarettes. “I have not yet had an opportunity to pay Mr. Ball a visit,” he said slowly, deliberately, “but you shall be the first to know when I do.”

      “You working on something for the magazine?”

      “That’s right, old boy. Profile of a rich bitch. Wants to see her name in print.”

      “Funny thing, Mr. Harvey, but I got a suspicion you’re not working on anything right now.”

      Harvey continued to fumble for his cigarettes, his eyes lowered. “That’s ridiculous. Where the hell are my cigarettes?”

      “My guess is you got canned. Month or two ago? Come clean, Mr. Harvey.”

      Harvey sighed and lifted his head. “It’s true I’m not working for Sport of Kings at the moment. It’s all free-lance I’m doing right now.”

      “Bullshit, you’re not doing anything right now.”

      “I beg your pardon.”

      “Oh, for fucksake.”

      Young’s stomach ache had been in remission for most of the day, but now it was starting up again. I’ve got to get something to eat, he thought. He stopped at a Chinese takeout place on his way home.

      Standing on her tiptoes at the jukebox, a little girl with a ruined face was making her selections. She was dressed in pink overalls, a yellow T-shirt, and yellow sneakers. She had platinum hair that bounced off her shoulders as she danced back to the table where a woman and a man were sitting. Young guessed that the woman was her mother and the man was the mother’s boyfriend. He wondered what had happened to the little girl’s face. Was it a car accident? Did she hit the dashboard? Was that why the left side of her face was off-kilter, indented, the cheekbone gone, the eye sunken and dead? Was that why her nose looked reconstructed and the left corner of her mouth was twisted into a permanent smile? Young touched a fingertip to the Steri-Strips on his cheekbone. The mother kept repeating, “Missy, come on, I’ve got to get to work,” and the man would say, “Missy, get your raincoat,” but neither of them made any move to leave, even though the server had already placed their bag of takeout in front of them. The man was smoking a cigarette.

      Young wanted to comfort the girl. He wanted to tell her we all have scars, even though you can’t see most of them. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, he wanted to tell her.

      Young ordered soo guy, orange beef, shrimp with garlic and green pepper, and steamed rice. “Give me a Blue while I’m waiting,” he said to the waiter.

      At a table behind Young sat a fat man wearing a filthy Blue Jays cap. The man announced, to no one in particular, “I’m five foot seven, three hundred thirty-eight pounds.”

      Young turned and looked at him. From the lilt in his voice Young judged the man to be Irish.

      The man said, “My doctor says for my weight I should be eleven feet tall.”

      “Where you from?” Young said.

      “Belfast,” the man said. “I’ve been married thirty-three years. In prison, I should say. I’ve been in prison thirty-three years.”

      The waiter brought Young his bottle of beer and, fifteen minutes later, his bag of takeout. As Young pulled on his windbreaker, he heard the mother say, “I’ve got to get to work,” and the girl with the ruined face in a little, pleading half-voice say, “Just one more song, please, Mommy. Back Street Boys?”

      Young plodded along the sidewalk. The rain was falling heavily. He turned up the collar of his coat. The liquor store was still open, so he went in. His stomach was hurting seriously now, and he was either out of Jack or close to it, he couldn’t remember which.

      “We deal in lead, friend,” Young said into his portable phone.

      “Sarge, is that you? Where are you?”

      “We deal in lead, friend.”

      Then she caught on. “Oh,” she said. “That’s an easy one. The Magnificent Seven. Steve McQueen to Eli Wallach when the bad guys ride into the village. Give me a hard one.”

      “Okay, smartass,” Young said. “How many of them die?” Young had finished his Chinese food, his stomach ache had taken a breather, and he was sitting on a hardback dining room chair turned backwards in front of the open closet door in his bedroom. Except for his underpants, he was naked. He had a harness arrangement attached to his head, with a cord leading up to and over the top of the door and down the other side to a plastic bag containing fifteen pounds of water. A quarter of a century earlier, Young had pinched a nerve in his neck playing football, and once in a while it still gave him trouble; lunging at the man with the crow-bar had aggravated it. The idea of this apparatus—recommended by his chiropractor—was that the weight of the water would pull his head upward and, by creating more space between his vertebrae, relieve the pressure.

      Wheeler said, “Four died. Robert Vaughn, who played the southern dandy, he died. James Coburn, Charles Bronson, and ... don’t tell me.”

      “Can’t remember?”

      “Give me a minute.”

      “Want a clue?”

      “Quiet.” Wheeler was curled up on the sofa in the living room of her apartment. There was a cat in her lap. “It’s the one no one can ever remember, right?”

      “That’s right.” Young had decided not to tell Wheeler about the attack at the racetrack. It was Sunday night. She sounded relaxed, and he didn’t want to upset her. Monday would come soon enough. With his free hand, Young took a hairbrush from the bedside table. He reached over his shoulder and scratched his back with it. Its bristles were very stiff, which was why he had stolen it from Debi when she was living with him. It was the best back-scratcher he had ever owned.

      “Let me go over them,” Wheeler said. “Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, the horrible Horst Buchholz as the kid—”

      “I thought he was good in Tiger Bay, with Hayley Mills.”

      “—Robert Vaughn, James Coburn, Charles Bronson as Bernardo Reilly—”

      “And one more.” Young owned a copy of the movie; he watched it three or four times a year. He had two VCRs, one on top of the other in his living room. The bottom VCR played his videotapes, but wouldn’t rewind them. The one on top wouldn’t play them, but rewound beautifully. On his days off, Young liked to watch movies in segments—half an hour at breakfast, an hour at lunch, the rest at suppertime. “Give up?”

      “No, I don’t give up.” Wheeler pushed the cat from her lap, stood up from the sofa, and, carrying her portable phone with her, padded across the broadloom to her bookshelves. She took down the Film Guide and flipped through it silently.

      “For fucksake, Wheeler, I haven’t got all day.”

      “It’s on the tip of my tongue.”

      “Or all night.”

      “You haven’t got all night? You called me, remember. What’s the matter, you got a date? You all dressed up? What are you wearing, Sarge? You want to know what I’m wearing?”

      “I couldn’t care less what you’re wearing.”

      “Pajamas with feet.”

      Young put down the hairbrush and worked a finger under his head harness. Gingerly, he patted his Steri-Strips. “Really? Pajamas with feet?”

      “Yes, that’s right.”

      “Well, you wouldn’t believe what I’m wearing, but I’m not going to get into one of those kinky conversations where you tell me what you’re wearing and then I tell you what I’m

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