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For as he smiled and said, "But I'm not interested in the angles," I did not feel that shy warmth as of the winter sunshine which I had always felt before when he smiled, but suddenly felt something else, which I didn't have a name for but which was like the winter itself and not the winter sunshine, like the stab of an icicle through the heart. And I thought: _All right, you smile like that–you smile like that–__
So, even as the thought vanished–if a thought can ever be said to vanish, for it rises out of you and sinks back into you–so I said, "But you don't know what the angles are. For instance, the Boss expects you to write your ticket."
"The Boss," he repeated, and on the words his upper lip curled more than customary to expose the teeth, and the sibilance seemed exaggerated, "need to expect to buy me. I have–" he looked about the room at the clutter and near-squalor–"everything I want."
"The Boss isn't any fool. You don't think he was trying to buy you?"
"He couldn't," he said.
"What do you think he was trying to do?"
"Threaten me. That would be next."
"No," I nodded, "no that. He couldn't scare you."
"That is what he seems to depend on. The bribe or the threat."
"Guess again," I said.
He rose from his chair, took a couple of restless paces across the frayed green carpet, then swung to face me. "He needn't think he can flatter me," he said, fiercely.
"Nobody can flatter you," I said, softly, "nobody in the world. And do you know why?"
"Why?"
"Listen, pal, there was a man name Dante, who said that the truly proud man knew his own worth could never commit the sin of envy, for he could believe that there was no one for him to envy. He might just as well have said that the proud man who knew his own worth would not be susceptible to flattery, for he would believe that there was nothing anybody else could tell him about his own worth he didn't know already. No, you couldn't be flattered."
"Not by him, anyway," Adam said grimly.
"Not by anybody," I said. "And he knows it."
"What does he try for, then? Does he think I–"
"Guess again," I said.
He stood there in the middle of the frayed green carpet and stared at me, head slightly lowered, with the slightest shade–not of doubt or perturbation–over the fine abstract blue of the eyes. It was just the shade of question, of puzzlement.
But that is something. Not much, but something. It is not the left to the jaw and it does not rock them on their heels. It does no make the breath come sharp. It is just the tap on the nose, the scrape across with the rough heel of the glove. Nothing lethal, just a moment's pause. But it is an advantage. Push it.
So I repeated, "Guess again."
He did not answer, looking at me, with the shade deeper like a cloud passing suddenly over blue water.
"All right," I said, "I'll tell you. He knows you are the best around, but you don't cash in on it. So obviously, you don't want money, or you would charge folks something like the others in the trade or would hang on to what you do take. You don't want fun, or you would get some, for you are famous, relatively young, and not crippled. You don't want comfort, or you would quit working yourself like a navvy and wouldn't live in this slum. But he knows what you want."
"I don't want anything he can give me," Adam affirmed.
"Are you sure, Adam?" I said. "Are you sure?"
"Damn it–" he began, and the blood was up in his cheeks.
"He knows what you want," I cut in. "I can put it in a word, Adam."
"What?"
"You want to do good," I said.
That stopped him. His mouth was open like a fish's gaping for air.
"Sure," I said, "that's it. He knows your secret."
"I don't see what–" he began, fiercely again.
But I cut in, saying, "Easy now, it's no disgrace. It's just eccentric. That you can't see somebody sick without having to put your hands on him. That you can't see something rotten inside him without wanting to take a knife in your strong, white, and damned welleducated fingers, pal, and cut it out. It is merely eccentric, pal. Or maybe it is a kind of supersickness you've got yourself."
"There's a hell of a lot of sick people," he said glumly, "but I don't see–"
"Pain is evil," I said, cheerfully.
"Pain is _an__ evil," he said, "but it is not evil–it is not evil in itself," and took a step toward me, looking at me like an enemy.
"That's the kind of question I don't debate when I've got the toothache," I retorted, "but the fact remains that you are the way you are. And the Boss–" I delicately emphasized the word _Boss__–"knows it. He knows what you want. He knows your weakness, pal. You want to do good, and he is going to let you do good in wholesale lots."
"Good," he said, wolfishly, and twisted his long, thin upper lip, "good–that's a hell of a word to use around where he is."
"Is it?" I asked casually.
"A thing does not grow except in its proper climate, and you know what kind of a climate that man creates. Or ought to know."
I shrugged. "A thing is good in itself–if it is good. A guy gets ants in his pants and writes a so
"You are completely irrelevant," he said.
"So I am irrelevant," I said, and got out of the chair. "That's what you always used to say when I got in a corner in an argument a thousand years ago when we were boys and argued all night. Could a first-class boxer whip a first-class wrestler? Could a lion whip a tiger? Is Keats better than Shelley? The good, the true, and the beautiful. Is there A God? We argued all night and I always won, but you–you bastard–" and I slapped him on the shoulder–"you always said I was irrelevant. But little Jackie is never irrelevant. Nor is he immaterial, and–" I looked around, scooped up my hat and coat–"I am going to leave you with that thought and–"
"A hell of a thought it is," he said, but he was gri
But I ignored him anyway, saying–"You can't say I don't put the cards on the table, me and the Boss, but I'm hauling out, for I catch the midnight to Memphis, where I am going to interview a medium."
"A medium?" he echoed.
"An accomplished medium maned Miss Littlepaugh, and she is going to give me word from the Other Shore that the Boss's hospital is going to have a dark, handsome, famous, son-of-a-bitch of a director named Stanton." And with that I slammed his door and was ru
I stood in the dark street and looked back at the building. The shade of a window was up and I looked in where a heavy, bald man in shirt sleeves sat at a table in what is called a "dinette" and slumped above a plate like a sack propped in a chair, while a child stood at his elbow, plucking at him, and a woman in a slack colorless dress and hair stringing down brought a steaming saucepan from the stove, for Poppa had come home late as usual with his bunion hurting, and the rent was past due and Joh