Cogan's Trade

“Son of a bitch,” Mitch said. “I du

“He’s about a hundred years old now,” Cogan said.

“For all I know,” Mitch said, “he’s fuckin’ dead. I du

“Maybe more’n one,” Cogan said.

“Well,” Mitch said, “once or twice, maybe. But I could do it, then. Now, now I can’t do it. Now, I look at a glass of beer, I get fat. Pisses me off. It’s that cortisone I was taking, you know? It bloats you. I was, I said to the doctor, I told him, this stuff’s go

“What’re you on cortisone for?” Cogan said.

“Colitis,” Mitch said. “I was sick last spring, the summer. I really felt shitty. I didn’t take that much of it, you know? I wasn’t on it for that long. Except, well, I almost got real sick. I was, I hadda see the cock doctor and he gimme penicillin, and I didn’t bother to tell him, I’m o

“My wife had to take that stuff,” Cogan said, “that cortisone. I think it was that. Maybe it was something else. She didn’t gain that much weight, though.”

“She got arthritis or something?” Mitch said.

“Poison oak,” Cogan said. “She likes to be outdoors all the time she can, she’s got this real nice garden. And she was out there and she got this poison oak. So, she didn’t think anything about it, probably pulled some roots or something she shouldn’t’ve, and the next thing you know, well, she’s covered with that calomine lotion all the time and she’s itchy and it just wouldn’t go away. So she finally went the doctor, and he tells her, it’s in her bloodstream, and that’s when she started taking the stuff. It got in her hair, you know? It was all over her scalp and down behind her ears and everything. She gets up before me, she goes to work earlier’n I do, and it used to wake me up, she was in the bathroom, crying, it hurt so bad to comb her hair. So they said, we’re never go

“She’ll probably get it again next year, too, then,” Mitch said.

“I know it,” Cogan said. “I asked the doctor that, and he said no, that’s just if it gets in your blood and you don’t take nothing for it to kill it, then it comes back again if you just put stuff on it. But I wouldn’t be surprised. Them guys don’t always know what they’re doing. See, the big problem with her, is, she’s got, she’s always had this real bad problem with bugs, you know? Bees and hornets and stuff. She’s allergic to them.”

“Swells all up and everything?” Mitch said. “When I was a kid I used to do that.”

“Worse’n that,” Cogan said, “she could actually die. She’s got, she never leaves the house, she hasn’t got a needle with her, adrenalin, I got one in the glove box in the car, I got one in the truck. They told her, you get stung, you get stung above the neck, you got five minutes to get that shot. Twe

“Jesus,” Mitch said, “that’s a tough thing.”

“She’s a tough girl,” Cogan said. “She’s lived like that most of her life. ‘There’re bees in the world,’ she says. 1 can’t stay inside all my life. What if a bee comes inside?’ She told me, she got stung a couple years ago, we’re having di

“And every so often,” Cogan said, “she puts up with all of this, she knows what can happen to her, we got to go down and see her old lady, and Carol’s got two sisters, all right? And they each got about a million kids and Carol’s good with them. And her mother hasn’t got no sense. She gets this look on her face. She don’t have to say anything. Just sits there. And she knows what Carol’s got, of course, but she looks at her and my wife’s tough. ‘Ma,’ she’ll say, ‘Aunt Carol’ll have to be the limit, is all. You can’t always do the things you’d like to do.’ ”

“You can’t never do the things you’d like to do,” Mitch said. “Never. Every time you do, you get i

The waiter, having served the interns and technicians twice, brought the drinks to Cogan and Mitch.

“First of the day,” Mitch said. “Except for the ones I had on the plane, anyway.” He drank. “Buck and a half for a stinking drink,” he said. “They oughta be ashamed of themselves. Fuckin’ bandits. No, look at Dillon. There’s a guy. I never seen the guy do too much of anything. He’d take a drink, he liked a big meal now and then, I guess he used to get a broad when he needed one. I du

“He used to go and see his wife some times,” Cogan said.

“She was a beauty,” Mitch said. He finished the drink. He signaled the waiter. “He told me once, he caught her going through his pockets. I told him: I’d kill a broad I caught doing that.’ And you know what he told me? ‘No,’ he says, ‘I always like to know, anybody that’s around me, how far he’s willing to go. Now, about her, I know.’ I du

“You still in the union?” Cogan said.

“Nah,” Mitch said. “I hadda give that up. There’s too many, you know what they’re doing now? It’s the fuckin’ PRs, mostly. You hear about it and everybody thinks: it’s the niggers. But it’s not. New York, maybe some place else it is. But not New York. New York it’s PRs. I du