The Talisman

you a little nest, kid,’ she said.
    ‘Thanks,’ he said. It was a simple, almost offhand act of kindness, but Jack found himself having to struggle from bursting into tears. He managed a smile instead. ‘Thanks a lot, Lori.’
    ‘No problem. You’ll be all right here, Jack. Smokey ain’t so bad. Once you get to know him, he ain’t half bad.’ She said this with an unconscious wistfulness, as if wishing it were so.
    ‘Probably not,’ Jack said, and then he added impulsively, ‘but I’m moving on tomorrow. Oatley’s just not for me, I guess.’
    She said: ‘Maybe you’ll go, Jack . . . and maybe you’ll decide to stay awhile. Why don’t you sleep on it?’ There was something forced and unnatural about this little speech – it had none of the genuineness of her grin when she’d said Thought I’d make you a little nest . Jack noticed it, but was too tired to do more than that.
    ‘Well, we’ll see,’ he said.
    ‘Sure we will,’ Lori agreed, going to the door. She blew a kiss toward him from the palm of one dirty hand. ‘Good night, Jack.’
    ‘Good night.’
    He started to pull off his shirt . . . and then left it on, deciding he would just take off his sneakers. The storeroom was cold and chilly. He sat down on the apple-sacks, pulled the knots, pushed off first one and then the other. He was about to lie back on Lori’s New York World’s Fair souvenir – and he might well have been sound asleep before his head ever touched it – when the telephone began to ring out in the bar, shrilling into the silence, drilling into it, making him think of wavering, pasty-gray roots and bullwhips and two-headed ponies.
    Ring, ring, ring, into silence, into the dead silence.
    Ring, ring, ring, long after the kids who call up to ask about Prince Albert in a can have gone to bed. Ring, ring, ring, Hello, Jacky it’s Morgan and I felt you in my woods, you smart little shit. I SMELLED you in my woods, and how did you ever get the idea that you were safe in your world? My woods are there, too. Last chance, Jacky. Get home or we send out the troops. You won’t have a chance. You won’t –
    Jack got up and ran across the storeroom floor in his stocking feet. A light sweat that felt freezing cold seemed to cover his entire body.
    He opened the door a crack.
    Ring, ring, ring, ring.
    Then, finally:‘Hello, Oatley Tap. And this better be good.’ Smokey’s voice. A pause. ‘Hello?’ Another pause. ‘Fuck off !’ Smokey hung up with a bang, and Jack heard him re-cross the floor and then start up the stairs to the small overhead apartment he and Lori shared.
    7
    Jack looked unbelievingly from the green slip of paper in his left hand to the small pile of bills – all ones – and change by his right. It was eleven o’clock the next morning. Thursday morning, and he had asked for his pay.
    ‘What is this?’ he asked, still unable to believe it.
    ‘You can read,’ Smokey said, ‘and you can count. You don’t move as fast as I’d like, Jack – at least not yet – but you’re bright enough.’
    Now he sat with the green slip in one hand and the money by the other. Dull anger began to pulse in the middle of his forehead like a vein. GUEST CHECK , the green slip was headed. It was the exact same form Mrs Banberry had used in the Golden Spoon. It read:
1 hmbrg
$1.35
1 hmbrg
$1.35
1 lrg mk
.55
1 gin-ale
.55
Tx
.30
    At the bottom the figure $4.10 was written in large numbers and circled. Jack had made nine dollars for his four-to-one stint. Smokey had charged off nearly half of it; what he had left by his right hand was four dollars and ninety cents.
    He looked up, furious – first at Lori, who looked away as if vaguely embarrassed, and then at Smokey, who simply looked back.
    ‘This is a cheat,’ he said thinly.
    ‘Jack, that’s not true. Look at the menu prices—’
    ‘That’s not what I mean and you know it!’
    Lori flinched a little, as if expecting Smokey to clout him one . . . but Smokey only looked at Jack with a kind of terrible patience.
    ‘I didn’t charge you for your bed, did I?’
    ‘Bed!’ Jack shouted, feeling the hot blood boil up into his cheeks. ‘Some bed ! Cut-open burlap bags on a concrete floor! Some bed ! I’d like to see you try to charge me for it, you dirty cheat !’
    Lori made a scared sound and shot a look at Smokey . . . but Smokey only sat across from Jack in the booth, the thick blue smoke of a Cheroot curling up between them. A fresh paper fry-cook’s