Killing Them Softly (Cogan's Trade Movie Tie-in Edition)

Right?” The waiter nodded.
    â€œYou had lunch?” Cogan said.
    â€œOnna plane,” Mitch said. “I had lunch onna plane. Some lunch.”
    â€œOughta have the goulash,” Cogan said. “Basically it’s beef stew, but they put tomatoes and stuff in it. It’s pretty good.”
    â€œThey still got that place down the alley, all the bums go and you can get beef stew there?” Mitch said.
    â€œConway and Downey’s,” Cogan said, “yeah. Isn’t that great beef stew?”
    â€œI used to think so,” Mitch said. “Dillon took me in there one time. ‘Jesus,’ I said, ‘you know all the good joints, don’t you?’ It was one of those lousy days, snowing and everything, Christ, you couldn’t get around any place, and we’re having all kinds of problems with this guy and Dillon took me in there. He got all pissed off. Any time you want to piss Dillon off, make him think you think he’s doing something bush. Sets him right off. That and telling him there’s nothing the matter with him. I guess there is, though, huh?”
    â€œThis time there is,” Cogan said.
    â€œSon of a bitch,” Mitch said. “I dunno, I guess, shit, I’m fifty-one years old and I’m getting fat. I don’t know, I never had no trouble with my weight. I was about thirty, thirty-five, Jesus, you know something? When I was thirty, for Christ sake, you know who was fuckin’ President? Harry fuckin’ Truman.”
    â€œHe’s about a hundred years old now,” Cogan said.
    â€œFor all I know,” Mitch said, “he’s fuckin’ dead. I dunno. I used to, I used to cut down onna potatoes then, that’s all I had to do. No more problem. Work out now and then, lay off the potatoes. I could always have a glass of beer when I wanted one.”
    â€œMaybe more’n one,” Cogan said.
    â€œWell,” Mitch said, “once or twice, maybe. But I could do it, then. Now, now I can’t do it. Now, I look at a glass of beer, I get fat. Pisses me off. It’s that cortisone I was taking, you know? It bloats you. I was, I said to the doctor, I told him, this stuff’s gonna get me so fat I’ll die of that. And he tells me, no, soon’s I stop taking it, I’ll go right down again. But I didn’t.”
    â€œWhat’re you on cortisone for?” Cogan said.
    â€œColitis,” Mitch said. “I was sick last spring, the summer. I really felt shitty. I didn’t take that much of it,you know? I wasn’t on it for that long. Except, well, I almost got real sick. I was, I hadda see the cock doctor and he gimme penicillin, and I didn’t bother to tell him, I’m onna cortisone, and I guess you’re not supposed to do that, mix them two things like that. I was really sick for about a week or so. Couldn’t get or do anything.”
    â€œMy wife had to take that stuff,” Cogan said, “that cortisone. I think it was that. Maybe it was something else. She didn’t gain that much weight, though.”
    â€œShe got arthritis or something?” Mitch said.
    â€œPoison oak,” Cogan said. “She likes to be outdoors all the time she can, she’s got this real nice garden. And she was out there and she got this poison oak. So, she didn’t think anything about it, probably pulled some roots or something she shouldn’t’ve, and the next thing you know, well, she’s covered with that calomine lotion all the time and she’s itchy and it just wouldn’t go away. So she finally went the doctor, and he tells her, it’s in her bloodstream, and that’s when she started taking the stuff. It got in her hair, you know? It was all over her scalp and down behind her ears and everything. She gets up before me, she goes to work earlier’n I do, and it used to wake me up, she was in the bathroom, crying, it hurt so bad to comb her hair. So they said, we’re never gonna beat it putting things on it, we’re gonna have to have you take something. I think it was cortisone. She really went through hell there, for a while.”
    â€œShe’ll probably get it again next year, too, then,” Mitch said.
    â€œI know it,” Cogan said. “I asked the doctor that, and he said no, that’s just if it gets in your blood and you don’t take nothing for it to kill it, then it comes back again if you just put stuff on