The Postman Always Rings Twice - James M. Cain [10]
"Well, you know me, Nick. I stay put a while, and then I got to ramble."
"You pick one hell of a time to ramble. What you do, hey? Come on, you don't do nothing, you old son a gun, I know you, come on over while I buy'm steaks I tell you all about it."
"You alone?"
"Don't talk so dumb, who the hell you think keep a place open now you run out on me, hey? Sure I'm alone. Me a Cora never get to go out together now, one go, other have to stay."
"Well then, let's walk over."
It took him an hour to buy the steaks, he was so busy telling me how his skull was fractured, how the docs never saw a fracture like it, what a hell of a time he's had with his help, how he's had two guys since I left and he fired one the day after he hired him, and the other one skipped after three days and took the inside of the cash register with him, and how he'd give anything to have me back.
"Frank, I tell you what. We go to Santa Barbara tomorrow, me a Cora. Hell boy, we got to step out a little, hey? We go see a fiesta there, and you come with us. You like that, Frank? You come with us, we talk about you come back a work for me. You like a fiesta a Santa Barbara?"
"Well, I hear it's good."
"Is a girls, is a music, is a dance in streets, is swell. Come on, Frank, what you say?"
"Well, I don't know."
"Cora be sore as hell at me if I see you and no bring you out. Maybe she treat you snotty, but she think you fine fellow, Frank. Come on, we all three go. We have a hell of a time."
"O.K. If she's willing, it's a go."
There were eight or ten people in the lunchroom when we got there, and she was back in the kitchen, washing dishes as fast as she could, to get enough plates to serve them.
"Hey. Hey Cora, look. Look who I bring."
"Well for heaven's sake. Where did he come from?"
"I see'm today a Glendale. He go to Santa Barbara with us."
"Hello, Cora. How you been?"
"You're quite a stranger around here."
She wiped her hands quick, and shook hands, but her hand was soapy. She went out front with an order, and me and the Greek sat down. He generally helped her with the orders, but he was all hot to show me something, and he let her do it all alone. It was a big scrapbook, and in the front of it he had pasted his naturalization certificate, and then his wedding certificate, and then his license to do business in Los Angeles County, and then a picture of himself in the Greek Army, and then a picture of him and Cora the day they got married, and then all the clippings about his accident. Those clippings in the regular papers, if you ask me, were more about the cat than they were about him, but anyway they had his name in them, and how he had been brought to the Glendale Hospital, and was expected to recover. The one in the Los Angeles Greek paper, though, was more about him than about the cat, and had a picture of him in it, in the dress suit he had when he was a waiter, and the story of his life. Then came the X-Rays. There were about a half dozen of them, because they took a new picture every day to see how he was getting along. How he had them fixed up was to paste two pages together, along the edges, and then cut out a square place in the middle, where the X-Ray was slipped in so you could hold it up to the light and look through it. After the X-Rays came the receipted hospital bills, the receipted doctors' bills, and the receipted nurses' bills. That rap on the conk cost him $322, believe it or not.
"Is a nice, hey?"
"Swell. It's all there, right on the line."
"Of course, is a not done yet. I fix'm up red, a white, a blue, fix'm up fine. Look."
He showed me where he had put the fancy stuff on a couple of the pages. He had inked in the curlycues, and then colored it with red, white, and blue. Over the naturalization certificate, he had a couple of American flags, and an eagle, and over the Greek Army picture he had crossed Greek flags, and another eagle, and over his wedding certificate he had a couple of turtle doves on a twig. He hadn't figured out yet what to put over the other stuff, but I said over the clippings he could put a cat with red, white, and blue fire coming out of its tail, and he thought that was pretty good. He didn't get it, though, when I said he could have a buzzard over the Los Angeles County license, holding a couple of auctioneer's flags that said Sale Today, and it didn't look like it would really be worth while to try to explain it to him. But I got it, at last, why he was all dressed up, and not carrying out the chow like he used to, and acted so important. This Greek had had a fracture of the skull, and a thing like that don't happen to a dumb cluck like him every day. He was like a wop that opens a drug store. Soon as he gets that thing that says Pharmacist, with a red seal on it, a wop puts on a gray suit, with black edges on the vest, and is so important he can't even take time to mix the pills, and wouldn't even touch a chocolate ice-cream soda. This Greek was all dressed up for the same reason. A big thing had happened in his life.