Флетчер Флора - The Hot Shot

They all laughed and yelled like a bunch of boobs and said sure, that was right, and slapped each other on the bare butt, and no one but Tizzy Davis himself came over and sat down on the bench beside me and said, “Sure glad you’ve joined us, Scaggs. You’re a natural.” Then he gave me one of these damn virile slaps on the bare shoulders, and it stung like hell, the skinny fruit, and if it’d been anyone else I’d have knocked him on his ass, but as it was I let it go, and he stood up and said, “By the way, Scaggs, you ought to get together with some of us fellows some evening. We have some damn good times.”

He said damn like it was something he just threw in to show what a hell of a guy he was underneath and I almost spit in his eyes, it was so damn funny, but it didn’t turn out to be so funny after all, and a lot of those so-called nice guys really were a lot different underneath than you’d think to watch the prissy way they talked and carried on. That went for Tizzy Davis in spades, and I’m ashamed to say that right while I was talking to him that first time there in the locker room, I was a stinking virgin and he wasn’t.

After I was dressed, I went out with Bugs, and old Mulloy yelled after me that practice was at three o’clock sharp tomorrow afternoon, and I said sure, I’d be there, and Bugs said, “Boy, you’re solid. This game is the nuts.”

“Nuts is right,” I said, and he said, “No bull, Skimmer, this God-damn game’s a racket. You don’t have to study a damn bit, and you still pass all your subjects, because the coach runs down to the principal and raises blue hell if any of the team flunks, and the principal goes and raises hell with the teacher that flunked you, because the principal thinks the team is great stuff for school spirit and all that crap, and he won’t stand for any of the guys being flunked.”

I said I didn’t study, anyhow, and didn’t need any crummy excuse like playing a crummy game to keep me from doing it, and he said sure, that was right, but as it was I flunked half my subjects at least and this way I wouldn’t flunk any at all, because anyone that flunked couldn’t play on the team. “Besides,” he said, “that’s not all of it,” and I said, “What’s the rest of it?” and he said, “Well, the dolls, for one thing,” and I said, “What the hell about the dolls?” and he said, “Jesus, Skimmer, the dolls really go for the guys that play this game. No bull, you’re a hotshot if you’re on the team. You’d think throwing that ball around made you some kind of lousy hero or something. You got to be on some kind of team to get the real classy dolls.”

“I haven’t seen you with any real classy dolls lately,” I said, and he said, “Never mind. I got a couple sniffing at me. You just wait and see. You won’t have to fool around any more with old Mopsy Beacon once the classy dolls get an eyeful of you giving your all for the dear old school,” and I said, “Jesus Christ, you sound just like that God-damn Mulloy. Besides, what’s the matter with Mopsy Beacon? Ever since Mopsy told her old man you tried to sneak a feel, and he told your old man and got the hell beat out of you, you’ve had a hard on for her. You start riding Mopsy again, I’m liable to give you a fat lip.”

“You and who else?” he said, and I stopped and said, “You like to find out?” and he gave this sickly laugh and said, “Oh, to hell with Mopsy. She’s just a ring-tailed wonder. Ava Gardner’s just a hag compared to Mopsy.”

I let it drop then, because I really didn’t want to slap old Bugs around any, him being a pretty good guy for a Goddamn moron, and besides, to tell the truth, Mopsy wasn’t worth it. She wasn’t a bad looking doll when she took her crummy goggles off, and if I’d wanted to I could’ve told Bugs that she might have squealed on him for sneaking a feel, but she didn’t squeal on me, and I’d done it lots of times, but the hell of it was, she wouldn’t let me go any farther. You tried to get down to business, she started telling you all this bull about how that was something holy and precious that ought to be saved till after a guy and a girl were married, and I got sore once and told her that if she was planning to save it that long for me, she’d be saving it forever.

Bugs and I had to go through town to get over on the side where we lived, which was the crummy side, naturally, and on the way we passed Dummke’s Cigar Store. When we got in front of it, I told Bugs to give me the lousy two-bits he owed me because I was all out of cigarettes and wanted to get some. He started in telling me how I couldn’t smoke any more, now that I was on the team, because cigarettes took your wind, and wind was one of the most important things when it came to playing basketball, and I said he was just trying to get out of paying off the two-bits, and I didn’t intend to give up gaspers for any lousy game, and pretty soon he dug down in his stinking pocket and paid off, only twenty-three cents, though, three nickels and eight God-damn pennies. If there’s anything I hate, it’s pennies, because you always feel like a damn fool counting them out, and whoever’s selling you whatever you’re buying keeps looking at you like you were a crummy cheapskate who’d robbed the baby’s piggy bank or something, and besides, someone’s always saying, “You got a penny for tax?” and if you don’t have it, they say, “Oh, that’s all right, I’ll get it next time,” but if you do have it, you got to fork the damn thing over, and you always feel like a sucker for having it.

Twenty-three cents was just exactly enough for the cigarettes, so I went in to get them, and old Gravy Dummke himself came up behind the counter to wait on me. Everyone called him Gravy because he got a cut from so God-damn many crooked things around town, and it was a crying wonder how he did it, because you wouldn’t have thought to look at him that anyone would have bothered to spit on him. He was fat and greasy with a headful of dirty black curls all slopped up with some kind of stinking oil, and when he smiled at you it looked like his whole damn face fell apart and left you standing there looking at about a square mile of ivory. The smile didn’t mean a damn thing, though, and he was a nasty bastard, always throwing something into you and breaking it off, and today he said, “Hello, kid. You still out of jail?”

“You’re a hell of a one to be yakking about jail,” I said. “The cop’ll jump that game in your back room someday, and you’ll damn well think jail.”

His fat, greasy face smoothed out like a billiard ball, and his little eyes got kind of sleepy and mean, and he said, “You got a big mouth, kid. You’re bound to get in big trouble someday, you got such a big mouth.”

I said, “All I want is a God-damn pack of cigarettes. You want to sell me a pack of cigarettes or not?” and he said, “Why the hell should I particularly want to sell you a lousy pack of cigarettes?” but he slapped a pack on the counter, anyhow, the brand I smoked, and I slapped all those stinking pennies on the glass counter and spread them around and left. You ever tried to pick up a lot of coins off a glass counter? It’s a hell of a job.

Outside, Bugs said, “You oughtn’t to needle Gravy that way. Gravy’s a pretty damn big shot, if you want to know it. Jackie Bramble’s big brother works for Gravy, dealing and taking bets and things like that, and he says Gravy’s got connections in the city with all the big gamblers and everyone,” and I said, “He’s just a lousy small-town punk, and if he had so much on the ball he’d be a big shot gambler up in the city himself instead of being down here in this jerk town running a crummy game in the back of a cigar store. Besides, it wouldn’t make any difference if he had connections with Frank Costello himself, I don’t take any lip from any lousy grease-ball.”