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the life he wanted to live.
    Me, I was digging it. I got so I kept my body hair trimmed close, dressed nice, wore a monocle and a top hat and very nice suits. I took to going to jazz clubs, learned to play the bongos, smoked big cigars. I liked having an evening martini, wearing my bathrobe and slippers. I even did a little record album with a couple of those cool jazz cats; one of them on bass, one on sax, and me beating the skins. I got so I could lay down quite a few French phrases and a smidgeon of Italian. And there was another thing. Me and The Woman, all those nights she slept on my couch… Well, we got close. We talked about The Big Guy. We worried about him. We cried over him. We hugged each other in sympathy. In short time I was laying the pipe to her like I was running a gas line from here to Cuba. We didn’t mean for it to happen. It just did. The Woman told me that before I took her to bed, she and The Big Guy hadn’t had sex in three months. He had found a substitute for sex: whisky, beer, wine and vodka, as well as his favorite, bourbon, and sometimes a little rubbing alcohol taken from the medicine cabinet over the sink. He had even been known to drink hair oil. He had the itch bad.
    He had also became a bigger spectacle and public disgrace. Shedding his clothes. Running naked through the streets. Climbing the Empire State building, all the way to the top where the zeppelin dock was. Swimming in public fountains, pulling one of the stone lions down from its pedestal at the New York Public library. Just got hold of it and yanked that big sucker off its pedestal and broke it to pieces. He even swam out to the Stature of Liberty. Can you imagine that. I can’t swim at all, but he swam all the way out there, climbed it because he can, had a hot dog from a vendor, and swam back; all of this done without a stitch on, just like in the old days.
    Here’s something I’m really ashamed of. I began to be embarrassed of The Big Guy. My best friend. My brother. We had done a lot of things together in the old days that were no worse than the things he was doing now, in the new days. Bless me, but I was starting to shake my head and cluck my tongue. To be honest, I really enjoyed banging his old lady. That doesn’t mean I quit feeling for him. Late at night, holding The Woman in my arms, after I had drunk my martini and had my fun with her, I would think. Shit, that’s tough on the old boy, me with his girl and him not knowing, and me not telling, and her not telling. But that didn’t change me. I stayed the same. That sweet, warm, woman and the cool, clean sheets, and the toilet where you could sit and read without fear of being attacked by some manner of beast, were much too satisfying to want to give up.
     
    …
     
    Now, I told you about that red-headed man who had loved The Woman and thought he was going to end up with her, but after The Big Guy came along, he might as well have been the balls on a brass monkey. She had no interest in him, and now, of course, her interest was in me. Or at least it was to some degree. I won’t kid you. Sometimes I would awake and find her missing from my arms. She would be sitting in a chair by the great open window that led out on the veranda that overlooked the light-winking city, naked, her blonde hair dangling, the moonlight nestled in those scars on her shoulders, her breasts spear-tipped from the cool air, and I could tell she was thinking about The Big Guy. Somewhere, maybe he was thinking about her. It was hard to say. He seldom came back to the hotel anymore, which is why he didn’t miss her from his bed. He slept atop buildings, or in the park, or on a bench, usually clutching a bottle of booze in a brown paper bag. I had brought him home many a time in that condition, until I finally gave it up. Nothing changed him. I even talked to him about The Woman. I didn’t mention that me and her were doing the nasty—though I would never have thought of it that way in the