"Christ almighty, I didn't think you were ever gonna get here!"
Looking into Beezer's alarmed, agonized eyes, Jack realizes that he will never tell this guy that he might be able to find Black House without Mouse's help, that thanks to his time in the Territories he has a kind of range finder in his head. No, not even if they live the rest of their lives as close friends, the kind who usually tell each other everything. The Beez has suffered like Job, and he doesn't need to find out that his friend's agony may have been in vain.
"Is he still alive, Beezer?"
"By an inch. Maybe an inch and a quarter. It's just me and Doc and Bear Girl now. Sonny and Kaiser Bill got scared, ran off like a couple of whipped dogs. March your boots in here, sunshine." Not that Beezer gives Jack any choice; he grabs him by the shoulder and hauls him into the little two-story on Nailhouse Row like luggage.
23
"ONE MORE !" says the guy from ESPN.
It sounds more like an order than a request, and although Henry can't see the fellow, he knows this particular homeboy never played a sport in his life, pro or otherwise. He has the lardy, slightly oily aroma of someone who has been overweight almost from the jump. Sports is perhaps his compensation, with the power to still memories of clothes bought in the Husky section at Sears and all those childhood rhymes like "Fatty-fatty, two-by-four, had to do it on the floor, couldn't get through the bathroom door."
His name is Penniman. "Just like Little Richard!" he told Henry when they shook hands at the radio station. "Famous rock 'n' roller from back in the fifties? Maybe you remember him."
"Vaguely," Henry said, as if he hadn't at one time owned every single Little Richard had ever put out. "I believe he was one of the Founding Fathers." Penniman laughed uproariously, and in that laugh Henry glimpsed a possible future for himself. But was it a future he wanted? People laughed at Howard Stern, too, and Howard Stern was a dork.
"One more drink!" Penniman repeats now. They are in the bar of the Oak Tree Inn, where Penniman has tipped the bartender five bucks to switch the TV from bowling on ABC to ESPN, even though there's nothing on at this hour of the day except golf tips and bass fishing. "One more drink, just to seal the deal!"
But they don't have a deal, and Henry isn't sure he wants to make one. Going national with George Rathbun as part of the ESPN radio package should be attractive, and he doesn't have any serious problem with changing the name of the show from Badger Barrage to ESPN Sports Barrage — it would still focus primarily on the central and northern areas of the country — but . . .
But what?
Before he can even get to work on the question, he smells it again: My Sin, the perfume his wife used to wear on certain evenings, when she wanted to send a certain signal. Lark was what he used to call her on those certain evenings, when the room was dark and they were both blind to everything but scents and textures and each other.
Lark.
"You know, I think I'm going to pass on that drink," Henry says. "Got some work to do at home. But I'm going to think over your offer. And I mean seriously."
"Ah-ah-ah," Penniman says, and Henry can tell from certain minute disturbances in the air that the man is shaking a finger beneath his nose. Henry wonders how Penniman would react if Henry suddenly darted his head forward and bit off the offending digit at the second knuckle. If Henry showed him a little Coulee Country hospitality Fisherman-style. How loud would Penniman yell? As loud as Little Richard before the instrumental break of "Tutti Frutti," perhaps? Or not quite as loud as that?
"Can't go till I'm ready to take you," Mr. I'm Fat But It No Longer Matters tells him. "I'm your ride, y'know." He's on his fourth gimlet, and his words are slightly slurred. My friend, Henry thinks, I'd poke a ferret up my ass before I'd get into a car with you at the wheel.
"Actually, I can," Henry says pleasantly. Nick Avery, the bartender, is having a kick-ass afternoon: the fat guy slipped him five to change the TV channel, and the blind guy slipped him five to call Skeeter's Taxi while the fat guy was in the bathroom, making a little room.
"Huh?"
"I said, ‘Actually, I can.' Bartender?"
"He's outside, sir," Avery tells him. "Pulled up two minutes ago."
There is a hefty creak as Penniman turns on his bar stool. Henry can't see the man's frown as he takes in the taxi now idling in the hotel turnaround, but he can sense it.