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.Dexy had to give #37 a little slap to bring her around to what passed for her senses.Then he offered Eddie his hand, but Eddie was in an unforgiving mood.Dexy and his friend left without adopting any slum kids.Dexy had been right — he did have enough on his plate already, at least if he was planning on any further association with the intriguing Miss Thirty-seven from Smokin’ Sal’s Saloon.Eddie didn’t adopt anybody, either, but he’d been pretty well distracted by the events of that evening, and could probably be forgiven if his earlier intention to take on a foster child was forgotten in the course of things.Several of us did allow Leary to browbeat us into doing good, however, and between us we signed up for any number of waifs.So the evening was a fair success, at least in that respect.And Sue-wang seemed inseparable from a nice young man in the import-export trade, which was nice for her.Nid and Noi, on the other hand, were both sick, taking it in turns to monopolize the toilet, and this was making life somewhat uncomfortable for the rest of us.Keeow and Boom had both disappeared.Big Toy was awash in tequila, and she’d had to turn over the bridge, to relinquish command of the cash to Dinky Toy, who resented this mightily, since she’d grown quite fond of a fellow from the Aussie Embassy who’d wandered in off the street, and it was very hard to concentrate on these two matters of business at the same time.I left at 1:00.Doc never did show up, which everyone agreed was very strange.III“You gotta understand Dexy’s position.” Or so Leary was trying to claim.It was a week after the Orphan Party, and I’d dropped in at Boon Doc’s to see how things were going.The joint was empty.There was Leary, Big Toy, Dinky Toy, and myself.A couple of the other girls were curled up asleep in the booths along the wall.“Dexy was abandoned by his momma, though you don’t have to tell him I told you so.But she didn’t leave him on no doorstep; she left him up an alley behind some trash cans to die.Somebody found him there; heard him crying.”Leary wiped at the sweat on his face and cast a black look in the direction of the air-conditioner that didn’t.“Abandoned by his momma, and he never knew who his poppa was.It’s okay to call some guys a bastard, they know it’s only a word, but Dexy grew up with a kind of a chip on his shoulder, and there’s many a boy and there’s many a man never called him a bastard twice.“Till he struck off outa there to get his first oil job — he was just thirteen — he was nothing but ‘poor white trash’, in that little town he came from.Well, he never went back to that town, after he heard his adopted nanny died, and he never took kindly to anybody suggesting he don’t have folks like anybody else.Dexy’s a proud man.“Anyway, he’s sorry he roughed Eddie up the way he did.He doesn’ t think the lad’ s a bad guy; you just have to be careful what you say to old Dexy, sometimes.“And speak of the devil.”Sure enough, the door to the street had opened, and there was good old Dexy, though he didn’t appear to be the same proud man Leary had only just then described.He had a large gauze dressing stuck to his face, and he was walking very carefully, like he was carrying a rattlesnake in his pocket, maybe, and he figured it was best not disturbed.All in all, Dexy was considerably more subdued than was his wont.He got up on a barstool and ordered a drink; he sat there silent, in no way at all his usual ebullient self.“What happened to youT Leary finally asked.“Gosh.Last I remember, you whupped the other guy.”“And I was gonna send her to hair-dressing school.” Dexy’s voice had the hollow ring of a man whose last illusions had been cruelly shattered.“You can never trust a woman,” he added, his voice regaining some of its old timbre, though it still bespoke a man who’d had confirmed his worst suspicions about Life, and Women and Everything.“A woman?” Leary was taken aback.“What’re you talking about?”You got the idea Big Toy and Dinky Toy also wanted to know the answer to this question, because by now they were both polishing glasses with furious intensity, half leaning over the bar, bracketing Dexy like two mimes doing KGB agents, avid curiosity pretty well obscuring any concern they might have felt for the poor guy.“Number Thirty-seven,” croaked Dexy.“You know; from Smokin’ Sal’s.And I was gonna send her to hair-dressing school.”If the way Dexy looked right at the moment was the result of that offer, then you had to get the idea #37 didn’t want to go to hair-dressing school [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]