9
We approached the intersection of North Pearl and Ross Avenue at eleven-thirty, right around the time Kennedy’s 707 would be rolling to a stop near the official greeters… including, of course, the woman with the bouquet of red roses. The street corner ahead was dominated by the Cathedral Santuario de Guadalupe. On the steps, below a statue of the saint with her arms outstretched, sat a man with wooden crutches on one side and an enamel kitchen pot on the other. Propped against the pot was a sign reading I AM CRIPPLE UPBAD! PLEASE GIVE WHAT YOU CAN BE A GOOD SAMARIAN GOD LOVES YOU.
“Where areyourcrutches, Jake?”
“Back at Eden Fallows, in the bedroom closet.”
“You forgot yourcrutches?”
Women are good at rhetorical questions, aren’t they?
“I haven’t been using them that much lately. For short distances, I’m pretty much okay.” This sounded marginally better than admitting that the main thing on my mind had been getting the hell away from the little rehab cluster before Sadie arrived.
“Well, you could sure use a pair now.”
She ran ahead with enviable fleetness and spoke to the beggar on the church steps. By the time I limped up, she was dickering with him. “A set of crutches like that costs nine dollars, and you want fifty forone?”
“I need at least one to get home,” he said reasonably. “And your friend looks like he needs one to getanywhere.”
“What about all that God loves you, be a good Samaritan stuff?”
“Well,” the beggar said, thoughtfully rubbing his whiskery chin, “Goddoeslove you, but I’m just a poor old cripple fella. If you don’t like my terms, make like the Pharisee and pass by on the other side. That’s what I’d do.”
“I bet you would. What if I just snatched them away, you money-grubbing thing?”
“I guess you could, but then God wouldn’t love you anymore,” he said, and burst out laughing. It was a remarkably cheerful sound for a man who was crippled up bad. He was doing better in the dental department than the Studebaker cowboy, but not a whole hell of a lot.
“Give him the money,” I said. “I only need one.”
“Oh, I’ll give him the money. I just hate being screwed.”
“Lady, that’s a shame for the male population of planet Earth, if you don’t mind me saying.”
“Watch your mouth,” I said. “That’s my fiancée you’re talking about.” It was eleven-forty now.
The beggar took no notice of me. He was eyeing Sadie’s wallet. “There’s blood on that. Did you cut yourself shaving?”
“Don’t try out for theSullivanshow just yet, sweetheart, Alan King you’re not.” Sadie produced the ten she’d flashed at oncoming traffic, plus two twenties. “There,” she said as he took them. “I’m broke. Are you satisfied?”
“You helped a poor crippled man,” the beggar said. “You’rethe one who ought to be satisfied.”
“Well, I’m not!” Sadie shouted. “And I hope your damn old eyes fall out of your ugly head!”
The beggar gave me a sage guy-to-guy look. “Better get her home, Sunny Jim, I think she’s gonna start on her monthly right t’irectly.”
I put the crutch under my right arm—people who’ve been lucky with their bones think you’d use a single crutch on the injured side, but that’s not the case—and took Sadie’s elbow with my left hand. “Come on. No time.”
As we walked away, Sadie slapped her jeans-clad rump, looked back over her shoulder, and cried: “Kiss it!”
The beggar called: “Bring it back and bend it in my direction, honeylove, that you get for free!”
10
We walked down North Pearl… or rather, Sadie walked and I crutched. It was a hundred times better with the crutch, but there was no way we could make the intersection of Houston and Elm before twelve-thirty.
Up ahead was a scaffolding. The sidewalk went beneath it. I steered Sadie across the street.
“Jake, why in theworld—”
