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Goldman?"
     

 
    — 6 —
    Joey had not been able to remember the
retreat through the laundromat. The first thing he recalled was
standing on the sidewalk, watching the low red sunlight bounce off
his smashed windshield and throw rainbows onto the Caddy's old
upholstery. He reached for his sunglasses, and when he pulled them
out of his shirt pocket, the hundred and twenty dollars fell onto
the street. He hesitated a moment, thinking that it would be a
suave gesture to let the money lie there. Then he bent down and
plucked the bills off the hot asphalt, hoping no one would
notice.
    Back at the compound, he'd made a rum and
tonic, sat down with it near the pool, and noted in himself a
dangerous desire. It was the desire just to sit there and do
nothing. When things went badly, it made sitting near water with a
cocktail seem absolutely heavenly, saner than any possible action.
Then, too, there was the tropical thing. Up north people kept busy
to keep warm, kept moving so as not to get trampled. Here it was
pleasantest to stay still. This was not something you decided but
something you realized through your pores. The air was the same
temperature as your skin. It felt good. Soft breezes whispered of
the timeless appeal of being a lazy bum.
    The only problem was the money.
    That, and the way Sandra looked when she got
home from work—pale, dressed in long-sleeved business blouses that
were too warm, her light eyes tired behind the big square glasses,
her fingertips gray- green from counting out fresh twenties. He'd
greet her, tan, in a bathing suit, and after hello there'd be a
pregnant silence. Problem was, anything Sandra said—What's new? How
was your day?—sounded to Joey like a reproach. Not that Sandra
meant it that way. She'd sit down on the edge of Joey's lounge
chair and pull her skirt primly over her knees. She'd take deep
breaths of the jasmine and frangipani, getting the stale aftertaste
of air-conditioning out of her lungs, and she'd try to make civil
conversation. Joey, like a sulky teenager whose true frustration is
that he has nothing to hide, would seem to be hiding behind
one-word answers. His day was fine. Nothing was new.
    The thing was, Joey would have liked to talk
to her, but where he was from, there were a lot of things you just
didn't discuss with your girlfriend . What's new? Well, I tried
to take over the numbers racket today. How was your day? Lousy—a
three-hundred-pound Cuban spit fruit on my shoe. No, this was
not stuff you told your girlfriend, only your pals. But that
assumed you had pals, and who were Joey's buddy-boys down here?
Peter and Claude? So Joey mostly kept mum. As soon as he could, he
moved the conversation away from himself.
    "Sandra," he'd say, "those clothes, they're
too hot. You must be like sweltering. Why don't you buy your-self
some new ones?"
    By reflex, Sandra would run her hand along
the fabric of her skirt. "This is O.K. for now. After I get a few
paychecks, maybe I'll go shopping."
    "And then we gotta get you tan."
    Sandra gave a little laugh. "Never happen."
Then she looked down at the still blue water of the swimming pool,
looked at it as if it were a thousand miles away instead of at her
feet. "I wouldn't mind some time to lay around, though."
    There it was, thought Joey. Not an
accusation, not even a complaint. Just the truth. Joey was not
holding up his end, and he knew it.
    So, a couple of evenings after his meeting
with Carlos, he went downtown to look into the pimping
business.
    He wasn't going to be a pimp. He had
standards about that kind of thing—though it was true that, under
the pressures of idleness and exile, he could already feel his
standards beginning to erode. Still, pimps (by which Joey meant New
York pimps) were an unseemly and amateurish lot. They took drugs
and wore idiotic hats, they squandered assets and drowned
themselves in after-shave, their business acumen was in their dicks
and they had no feel for detail work. They badly