“Blondie's is gone, I toldja!” he screamed. “My mom says he upped and ran away with that redhead floozy he hired last month! You should be so lucky, you ugly prick!”
He turned and went running up Sunset in that strange way of his, with his splayed fingers held out in front of him. People stood in little clusters on both sides of the street, looking at him, looking at the papers fluttering in the street, looking at me.
Mostly looking at me, it seemed.
This time Peoria – well, okay, Francis – made it as far as Derringer's Bar before turning to deliver one final salvo.
“Fuck you, Mr. Umney!” he screamed, and ran on.
II. Vernon's Cough.
I managed to pull myself erect and make my way across the street. Peoria, aka Francis Smith, was long gone, but I wanted to put those blowing newspapers behind me, too. Looking at them was giving me a headache that was somehow worse than the ache in my groin.
On the far side of the street I stared into Felt's Stationery as if the new Parker ball-point pen in the window was the most fascinating thing I'd ever seen in my life (or maybe it was those sexy imitationleather appointment books). After five minutes or so – time enough to commit every item in the dusty show-window to memory – I felt capable of resuming my interrupted voyage up Sunset without listing too noticeably to port.
Questions circled in my mind the way mosquitoes circle your head at the drive-in in San Pedro when you forget to bring along an insect stick or two.