Angels in Heaven

the
garçon.
    “Roast chicken,” I said. “What can
they do to that?”
     
    Caruso once said, “When in Rome, do as the Romans do—honk your horn a lot.” So being in Mexico, I took a siesta after
lunch while Doris went shopping and Benny caught some rays by the poolette. We
met up again just at six, and I took Doris off to the sign store and the
printer to pick up my wares while Benny the Boy went back to the telephone
company to try bribing someone else.
    What the others did with themselves
after their outings I do not know, but what I did was lie on my bed in my
undies reading a Dick Francis and waiting for the next attack of the Aztec
two-step. All of which brought the time up to nine o’clock, which is when we
presented ourselves again at the desk of a certain portero, me carrying
a suitcase, Doris a shopping bag, and Benny the Wonder Boy two—count ’em,
two—telephones, for which he had paid not one centavo over the official price.
    Shortly thereafter Freddy hung some
dirty mats up in the elevator. Shortly thereafter that, a ramshackle vehicle
with wooden sides, containing our new used furniture, pulled up outside. A
brief discussion then ensued between Benny and the truck driver and his
accomplice, who, I assumed, were angling for a hefty tip, having discovered
that all the furniture couldn’t just be dumped on the sidewalk but actually had
to be carried up a whole flight of stairs and lugged all the way through the
lobby to the elevator, then unloaded from the elevator and transported down an
endless corridor to our office—but was I wrong again. No soiled pesos changed
hands, and yet another prejudice took the count, leaving me a mere hundred or
so. Changing is hard enough but changing for the better is murder. When the kid
from the stationer arrived in his battered panel truck, he too refused
everything but a handshake.
    Freddy took his leave about ten,
after loaning us his toolbox for the night, and we began the task of getting
the offices into shape. Using one of Freddy’s screwdrivers, and not without a
curse or two, I tried to attach the appropriate sign on the outside of the
front door. U.S.C.A., it stated simply.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” said
Doris, who was trying unsuccessfully to peer over my shoulder.
    “It’s not supposed to mean anything,”
I said patiently. “It does mean something. Either the United States Cultural
Association, which we are not, or United Supply, Commodities,
& Appliances, which we are. Perhaps you would care to peruse one of
our business cards.” I handed her over one that was still damp. “You can keep
it, I’ve got another four hundred and ninety-nine. Now go write an ode or
something, will you? Or fill up your drawers, or go pester Benny— what’s he
doing, anyway?”
    “He’s trying to hang that corkboard,”
she said. “He might be done in a couple of days. God, you guys make the Three
Stooges look good with their hands.”
    After I’d finally fought the second
screw all the way in, I unlocked my suitcase and took out of it a small
American flag on a stand, which I set on my desk next to the wooden sign that
read “V. Blackman, Director” and right in front of my new, fake marble pen
holder. Then I got out a large rolled-up map of the world, which Doris kindly tacked up on the corkboard and then studded haphazardly with pushpins of
various colors. Then I unpacked a framed photo of a touching family scene: a
proud father holding in his arms a mewling babe while his adoring wife and
small blond daughter beamed up at him, as did likewise a collie puppy. Thanks
to Wade, of Wade’s Pictorial Service, and his handy airbrush, scissors, and
glue pot, the father looked remarkably like one V. (for Victor) Daniel.
    ‘‘Mega gross,” said Doris as I was
trying the framed horror in various positions on my desktop.
    “I think it looks rather sweet and
touching,” I said.
    It was about eleven when we figured
we had done all we could do for one day. The furniture was in place, also the
(unconnected) telex, the phones plugged in and working. Benny had somehow
hooked up the intercom between the two rooms, and all our desks had the
appropriate signs on them (Benny’s read “B. Keith, Assistant Director”; Doris’s, “D. Day, Inquiries”) plus a scattering of diaries, rotary files, pencil
sharpeners, and the like. Doris had unpacked her shopping bag, which contained
of course a small bouquet of flowers, a vase for same, a paperback by