A PIECE OF CAKE

The next evening, when Lew wakes, Blindman is no where around. Adolph thinks he might be going to Red’s, which is a colossal mistake, so Lew dresses hastily and goes out after him. She finds him, standing on the corner in front of Danboy's Liquor Store up on Bass and Sixth, near the Reef Road viaduct. He's jauntily tapping his red and white cane on the marker for the cross-town bus.

"Whatcha doing here?" she asks. It turns out that Blindman is on his way to Red's. He's trumped up a story about some gink that ripped them off while they were at Crooked River, trying to set up a deal to sell a quantity of the stock to an experimental psychologist by the name of Olivia Belladonnas. While Lew was up talking to Olivia, a gunman robbed Blindman and got away with the whole package that they were intending to sell. If only Hanrahan could see his way clear to extend them a little more credit, they'd be sure to make due on their account in the shortest possible time.

Lew carresses Blindman with daughterly tenderness. "I can't let you go ol' drake. Hanrahan would tear out your feathers and stuff them where the sun doesn't shine. It's just too dangerous." Blindman swishes his cane skyward like a nobleman’s foil. "How better to die," he rants theatrically, "than in the service of Your Grace?" That said, Blindman raises his weapon one more time, clicks his heels and bows deftly like a Lancelot for his Guinevere.

As Blindman's swoop completes its arc, a wired numbers fiend with spiky hair and slits for eyes jitters out of Danboy's. His nose is plastered to a brand new dream book. The crimped three and four digit supplications, escaping his clenched jaw, are drowned out by the carbolic pitch of the street's pandemonium. The individual inhabitant at dusk is a single vessel in a raging storm of bus screeches, horn-honks, bells and buzzers, crashing metal grates, bigmouthed Hitachi’s on the shoulders of three dollar an hour guards, and raised voices, trying vainly to pierce the velvet coverlet that shrouds the beleaguered soul.

A wino (named Curly because of his perfectly smooth pate) tries to stop the number's mullah from chanting into the magic millions long enough to panhandle spare change for a bottle of Mad Dog. Two heads in collision, yet one single myopic eye. Neither of them knowing: STREET'S death trap is rigged to blow anytime. The chances of hitting a real pot of gold or buying-it in a car wreck (being just about equal) are seesawing back and forth like a great crosscut saw. Luck is a god with two faces, but one very distinct bunghole out of which pours the stuff of dreams. Nightmares too. To the man with the dream book, Curly's Mad Dog can grow hair and scratch. What good are spirits when, in this eternal bit, integers are spinning fat-cat tycoons for a five-dime investment.

Narrow beamed Lew and Blindman wait fretfully together for the cross-town bus. They hook arms to steady their nerves. Somehow the world is a little less foreboding, easier to bear, by the simple act of contact. While they're waiting, Polly and his wife Blaze drive up in Polly's father's ice cream truck and offer them a lift. Just standing at the curb, the old international harvester step-van sounds like about twenty-five ash-cans being dropped out a third story window. Cherry bombs poppin', seams grating against rivets, the boom-pow of the six cylinder, deciding on which piston to misfire next.

It's good ole Polly," says Lew to Blindman. He'll drive us." The only problem with Polly is his rattle-brained crush on Lew. He hangs on her every word. She says bark and Polly dogs down and wags. Lew doesn't mind. It’s nice to be elevated, but Blindman, turns cold at the prospect of this sophmoric kiss-ass hanging around at exactly the moment when Lew is giving him some badly needed human contact.

"And Blaze," Lew hisses into her teeth, in a cattish aside, as she plops down onto one of the ratty stuffed chairs behind the drivers seat. Blaze isn't one of Lew's favorite people. A renowned orgasmic, Blaze's sexual exploits keep the denizens of New Hope Park in a constant turmoil. The first time Lew was introduced to Blaze, at a late hour party, two men were methodically undressing her on an oversized hassock. The noisy affair, Blaze and the two men panting and slurping at each other’s bodies, almost made Lew puke. She didn't know why, but the whole thing got her cold and spiny. Besides, when Blaze is around, men hardly even know that Lew is there.

"Where to?", asks Polly with that boyish gimme, gimme all-watery-look in his eyes. "Green Street. Red's bar," says Lew. She tries hard to smile nice for Polly, but it feels more like a crack in patent leather so she adds a sexy, butterfly wink for good measure.

"Red's bar!" Blaze waxes derisive. I'm not putting a foot inside that snake pit! Drop me off at the New Palm Honey and when you're done with your little playmates, come back by and pick me up.

Blaze's fortuitous departure gives Lew her favorite geometric shape, the triangle. Energy flows up the legs, along the equidistant sides, to the apex and there, creates a tension that holds the form in place. Where there's tension there's power and power is the best aphrodisiac. Like a queen bee, Lew allows her drones their little familiarities and they are grateful. Grateful for the twined arm and grateful for the swash of teeth in that thin lipped smile. What is she worried about? Red's a pussy-cat. A piece of cake! That's what it's gonna be. A piece of cake!