The Last Gentleman

care if he was. The actor did care. As for the poor engineer, tuning in both, which was he, actor or playwright?
    â€œYou really did not remember him, did you?” the Negro asked the engineer.
    â€œNo, that’s right.”
    â€œHe’s not conning you, Forney,” the playwright told the pseudo-Negro.
    â€œI knew that,” cried the pseudo-Negro. “Barrett and I are old shipmates. Aren’t we?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œWe went through the Philadelphia thing together, didn’t we?”
    â€œYes.” It seemed to the engineer that the pseudo-Negro said “Philadelphia” as if it were a trophy, one of a number of campaign ribbons, though to the best of the engineer’s recollection the only campaign which had occurred was his getting hit on the nose by an irate housewife from Haddon Heights, New Jersey.
    â€œDo you think you could prevail upon the local fuzz to do something for you?” the pseudo-Negro asked him.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œLet Bugs out of jail.”
    â€œBugs?”
    â€œBugs Flieger. They put him in jail last night after the festival, and our information is he’s been beaten up. Did you know Mona over there is Bugs’s sister?”
    â€œBugs Flieger,” mused the engineer.
    The actor and the white girl looked at each other, the former popping his jaw muscles like Spencer Tracy.
    â€œTell—ah—Merle here,” said the actor, hollowing out his throat, “that Bugs Flieger plays the guitar a little.”
    â€œMerle?” asked the mystified engineer, looking around at the others. “Is he talking to me? Why does he call me Merle?”
    â€œYou really never heard of Flieger, have you?” asked the playwright.
    â€œNo. I have been quite preoccupied lately. I never watch television,” said the engineer.
    â€œTelevision,” said the girl. “Jesus Christ.”
    â€œWhat have you been preoccupied with?” the playwright asked him.
    â€œI have recently returned to the South from New York, where I felt quite dislocated as a consequence of a nervous condition,” replied the engineer, who always told the truth. “Only to find upon my return that I was no less dislocated here.”
    â€œI haven’t been well myself,” said the playwright as amiably as ever and not in the least sarcastically. “I am a very shaky man.”
    â€œCould you speak to the sheriff?” the pseudo-Negro asked him.
    â€œSure.”
    Breeze brought more beer and they all sat in the round booth at the corner under the glass bricks.
    â€œBaby, are you really from around here?” the playwright asked the engineer.
    â€œAsk Breeze.” The engineer scowled. Why couldn’t these people call him by his name?
    But when the playwright turned to Breeze the latter only nodded and shrugged. Breeze, the engineer perceived, was extremely nervous. His, the engineer’s, presence, disconcerted him. He didn’t know what footing to get on with the engineer, the old one, the old ironic Ithaca style: “Hey, Will, where you going?” “Going to caddy.” “How come your daddy pays you five dollars a round?” “He don’t pay no five dollars”—or the solemn fierce footing of the others. But finally Breeze said absently and to no one and from no footing at all: “This here’s Will Barrett, Lawyer Barrett’s boy. Lawyer Barrett help many a one.” But it was more than that, the engineer then saw, something else was making Breeze nervous. He kept opening the door a crack and looking out. He was scared to death.
    But the pseudo-Negro wanted to talk about more serious matters. He asked the others some interview-type questions about racial subjects, all the while snapping pictures (only the engineer noticed) from his tie-clasp camera.
    â€œIt’s a moral issue,” said the actor, breaking the swizzle stick between his fingers, breaking it the way actors break swizzle sticks and pencils. The pseudo-Negro explained that the actor had flown in from Hollywood with Mona his companion to assist in the present drive at great cost to himself, both financially and emotionally, the latter because he was embroiled in a distressing custody suit in the course of which his wife had broken into his bedroom and pulled Mona’s hair.
    â€œOf course it’s a moral issue,” said the playwright. Now the engineer remembered seeing one