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" "Well, might as well kiss and make up. There's noth- ing mean or petty about me." They shake hands without enthusiasm and peck each other on the cheek. The deal drags on for months. They engage the services of an Expeditor. Finally Marvie emerges with a check for 42 Turkestan kurds drawn on an anonymous bank in South America, to clear through Amsterdam, a procedure that will take eleven months more or less. Now he can relax in the cafes of The Plaza. He shows a photostatic copy of the check. He would never show the original of course, lest some envious citizen spit ink eradicator on the signature or otherwise muti- late the check. Everyone asks him to buy drinks and celebrate, but he laughs jovially and says, "Fact is I can't afford to buy myself a drink. I already spent every kurd of it buying Penstrep for Ali's clap. He's down with it fore and aft again. I came near kicking the little bastard right through the wall into the next bed. But you all know what a sentimental old thing I am." Marvie does buy himself a shot glass of beer, squeez- ing a blackened coin out of his fly onto the table. "Keep the change." The waiter sweeps the coin into a dust pan, he spits on the table and walks away. "Sore head! He's envious of my check." Marvie had been in Interzone since "the year before one" as he put it. He had been retired from some un- specified position in the State Dept. "for the good of the service." Obviously he had once been very good looking in a crew-cut, college boy way, but his face had sagged and formed lumps under the chin like melting paraffin. He was getting heavy around the hips. Leif The Unlucky was a tall, thin Norwegian, with a patch over one eye, his face congealed in a permanent, ingratiating smirk. Behind him lay an epic saga of un- successful enterprises. He had failed at raising frogs, chinchilla, Siamese fighting fish, rami and culture pearls. He had attempted, variously and without success, to promote a Love Bird Two-in-a-coffin Cemetery, to corner the condom market during the rubber shortage, to run a mail order whore house, to issue penicillin as a patent medicine. He had followed disastrous betting systems in the casinos of Europe and the race tracks of the U.S. His reverses in business were matched by the incredible mischances of his personal life. |
