Angels in Heaven

made my way
to one of my favorite spots for ruminating—the rear table at Dave’s Comer Bar,
the one facing the poo! table and next to the pinball machine. I noticed a new
sign on the wall behind the bar: “In God we trust. But if you’re not the head
of MGM, it’s cash on the line.” While I was reaching for my wallet to Pay for
the first drink, I found Prickle Head’s report. I reproduce it here, as it will
tell you far more about her than any Poor words of mine could.
     
    Tues. Sept. 22. 5.45 P.M.
    CONFIDENTIAL REPORT No 14.
    From Agent S. S. to V. D. (Ha-ha)
     
    My poetic musings interrupted by el
Cheapo on le phone;
    Surprised he didn’t call collect.
    Later, chez lui, après mucho grumble
& moan.
    He revealed to me my latest delect-
    Able assignment—roller skating for
measly bucks
    From A to B—I said it sucks.
    But what’s a girl to do?
    This babe needs new shoes too.
     
    Does she ever, I thought. And how
about new everything else?
     
    When Willing Boy gave me the eye
    To heat him up I flashed some thigh —
    From whence comes this wierd sexual
power over men?
    V. D. leant me his $5.00 Timex, and
then
    Off we all went on our A to B chore
    That could have been done by a
simpleton, more
    Or less. Mostly less. Then—hang on to
your wig,
    We trekked from A to B again—can you
dig?
    Is this any life for a spirit like
mine,
    Is this the fodder on which my
thirsty soul must dine?
    Didst Katherine Mansfield skate
through the grime...
     
    There was more, but enough’s enough,
especially after corned beef ’n’ cabbage. “From whence comes this wierd sexual
power over men.” She had about as much sexual power over men as Ma Kettle. What
a twerp. And in rhyme, suddenly. What happened to the flowing free verse of
yester-j year? I must have a serious talk with her someday, like in the next century,
about the passé-ness and déjè vu-ness of rhyming couplets that weren’t even
couplets.
    But pondering on Sara’s lamentable
limitations as a poetess was not what I was ensconced in Dave’s Comer Bar for.
I was there to ponder over such trifles as how to spring Billy from an unknown
Mexican can, what to do with him (and the rest of us) afterward, what to do
with Mom while I was away, and what to say to the Silvettis, Sara’s parents.
    Somewhere between the third and the
fourth brandy and ginger ale, I began to get a useful idea or two. Carla,
Dave’s latest bar girl, a stacked redhead if ever I’ve seen one (and I have
seen one, more than one—further details on request), kindly provided me with a
pen and a handful of cocktail napkins to make notes on. All the napkins had
illustrated jokes on them; the one I started with depicted an attendant in an
insane asylum remarking to another attendant, “There’s a lady on the phone
wants to know have we had any female patients escape recently.”
    “How come?” says the other attendant.
“Because,” the first says, “she says someone just ran off with her husband.”
    The problem was, of course, that
there was only so much, or rather so little, I could do from where I was, not
having any idea of what we’d be up against down in the Yucatán, land of
contrasts, where the old nudges the new, etc. So after covering some three or
four napkins with mostly undecipherable scribbles, I gave up and applied myself
to a more immediate challenge: beating the pantaloons off Bill the Butcher at
Eight Ball. And I would have too, if he hadn’t distracted me in the third game
when we were one game all; as I was lining up my shot, he took a swig of his
Coors, gargled noisely with it, and I scratched off the black.
    So I took myself over to the
Two-Two-Two for a nightcap and then, like a good boy, went home, looked in on
Mom, downed a glass of buttermilk, and curled up in bed with a good book, just
the kind I liked, a detective story in which the private op was older than me
but still got the girl.
     
    Bits and pieces were what the next
couple of days were. Bits and pieces were what a lot of my days were, since
many of my jobs were little more than errands involving one trip somewhere or
keeping an eye on someone or something for a few hours. Someday I planned on
penning a short but pithy essay on bits and pieces.
    On Wednesday, for example, I started
off by phoning Lt. L. Carstairs, whom Sneezy had told me had been the arresting
officer the last time Peter “Goose” Berry had been picked UP for being naughty.
But the lady cop on the switchboard down at South