As she rides by

freak is like?”
    “The opposite of you, Victor,” she said.
    “Ah,” I said. “The perfect description. So he’s a short, fat pacifist who plays the recorder and has hair down to his waist, eh?”
    “If you’re going to be like that,” she said, “good-bye.” She hung up. After a minute, so did I. If you’re going to be like that, good-bye... If I’m going to be like what, womanless as well as homeless? Doubly homeless now that moving temporarily into Evonne’s seemed highly unlikely even if I wanted to. She could beg me and I wouldn’t move into her place now. Good-bye to you too, babe. Have a happy life with your midget peacenik vegetarian twit with dreadlocks down to his knees, sipping overpriced espresso in fake Italian cafes really owned by Armenian immigrants. The little fucker’s also probably one of those guys who smokes a pipe and keeps rubbing the bowl against the side of his nose to bring out the briar.
    I don’t care.
    I build my castles in the sky... they turn to smoke, but what care I? I don’t, is what. I used to care, but no more, mi amor. I’m giving up caring, starting right now, and that includes caring for the world’s walking wounded as well as sagging bleached blondes. The next time some crippled stray or bedraggled waif or limping, burr-infested mutt comes whining at my door, fuck off pronto is the message they’ll get, you will see. FU. Adios, losers. Try the Samaritans, try Dial-A-Prayer, find another twenty-four-hour-a-day soup kitchen, V. D.’s triply locked door will remain triply locked, also nailed shut, also barred.
    Good-bye is right.
    Where was it ever written that I, V. D., was assigned the thankless task of being problem-solver to the needy? Nowhere is where. I don’t know why I even bothered in the first place, I could have gone to mortician’s school, or taken night classes in TV repair. I must have been blind, I must have been madly driven by some foolish do-gooder complex arising from what? Where? How come? Who knows, who knows, who knows what evil lurks in the minds of men and the hearts of women.
    It all could have something to do with being large.
    Large is supposed to be strong.
    Large is supposed to be able to look after itself.
    Large, by extension, is supposedly able to look after smaller and thus more vulnerable beings as well.
    Oh yeah? Tell that to the dinosaurs. Pass that message along to the mastodons and the behemoths and the hippos. Likewise to the rhinos, who are only disappearing as fast as a plate of fresh scones in a Scottish boarding house.
    I looked around the office. I was surprised I still had it, actually, useless though it now would be. Or soon would be, anyway—I’d finish up the few jobs I had on hand, do the chore I was booked for manana for Mr. Lubinski, the jeweler around the corner, dump the few yearly security contracts I had onto some other poor stooge, and then what? Then what for a man and his dog? Then what for a man and his dog and their almost classic Nash Metropolitan? Only the world, amigos, the world opening out and scrolling up into the endless heavens like credits in a Hollywood biblical epic... Paris at last! Venice by night! Even cinnamon-smelling Zanzibar teahouses with dreaming parrots, why not?
    The phone rang. I deigned to answer it. It was Sara the twerp, in tears.

Chapter Sixteen

    ... but I had this little stash I kept down inside one boot,
    And that’s kept me goin' for quite a while on beer 'n' refried beans...

    V IC?” SHE said tremulously.
    “Himself,” I said. “But who is this? It can’t be Sara Silvetti, because it’s still morning and everyone knows poets don’t tumble out of their unwashed sheets until the middle of the afternoon sometime.”
    “Oh, shut up for once, can’t ya?” she said. I shut up. There was a long pause, broken only by the occasional sniffle. Finally I said,
    “Now come on, honey, what’s the matter, tell Uncle Vic.”
    “Everything,” she said.
    “Everything?” I had a thought. “You don’t mean you’re... you’re... how shall I put it... that way?”
    “You mean knocked up?” she said. “No, thank Christ, everything but that.”
    I sighed. What the hell. Then I said, “It’s not going to do you any good staying shut up alone in your room like you probably are, so why don’t you come and mope over here with me and King? I could rustle up a couple of chores for you, I guess, to take your mind off things.”
    “See ya,” she said, hanging up