| The next morning Joe took breakfast in the hotel café. They were right about the air conditioning. Too bad it was January. More steam came out of his mouth than the coffee cup. His eggs may have been warm when they came up on the server ledge, but they were stiff and cold by the time he brought the first taste to his mouth. Sometimes eggs just seem like scrambled baby-bird corpses, and this was one of them. He ate the toast. He wasn’t hungry anyway. The sooner out, the better. The waiter hadn’t cleaned away the dishes at the next table. Every five minutes he’d burst through the kitchen doors, stare around the empty café, then retreat. No refills on the coffee. Joe considered holding up the cup and facing the kitchen doors, but the idea of maintaining the pos-ture for five minutes in the hopes the waiter would see him – well, it was a long way to go for a lousy cup of coffee. Cold coffee. To hell with this. Hit the road. He stood, threw a six bits on the table. He noticed a matchbook on the dirty table – nice. Red and black, never go wrong. Always a class act, always distinctive. He picked it up and gave it a closer look: eh. Less impressive. It’s our old friends the three lines. Everybody used to put the three lines somewhere, because it makes the design look modern, but that was strictly stalesville. Tell it Flash Gordon. And he’d like to ask the designer about the big top-heavy black spot – looks like it’s going to snap the three lines of modernity, fall over, and crush Cleveland. Well, no on who stayed there would care. Oh, the Auditorium Hotel? Went there with friends. They it had mice in the closets and sex fiends in the coatroom, but all I remember is the poorly drawn matchbooks. He put it in his pocket to add to the scrapbook, the one where he saved examples of designs he preferred to avoid. On the way out of the café he brushed against a man – he looked up. Beef. He kept walking. He turned around down the hall, and saw Beef standing at the dirty ta-ble, poking around. Looking for something. Looking for the matchbook. Because it had something written on it. No, because he needed matches. Christ, relax. Man rubbed out in gangland matchbook mystery! Sure. The elevator clattered open the moment he pressed the button; he got in, stabbed six, and tried to will the doors shut, half expecting a paw to shove in the crack and pry the doors open. Hand it over, ya louse! Don’t act innocent! I know you got it! But the doors shut and the elevator lurched up. Joe packed quickly and left, pausing in the hallway – elevator or stairs? Stairs he wouldn’t run into anyone, but what if he ran into Beef or Pony? It’s easier to, you know, have a tender moment alone with someone undisturbed in a stairwell. Then the elevator dinged, and without thinking he headed through the stairway door. Idiot! Now they’ll see it shut and wonder who was up there! Unless it was just the maid. Yes, it’s come to this. Unlikely as it seems, it might be the hotel maid instead of a gangster come to kill me over a matchbook. Hell, maybe Beef had thought better of his tip and come back to take away a dime. Still. Joe knew he couldn’t throw the matchbook away. Think. Let’s just say Beef braced him for it. Just consider. He’d better cough up, say sure, I needed some matches, sorry pal. Don’t get sore. But what if he pulled out the wrong matchbook, the nudie-cutie sample he used this morning? So you needed matches, pally. Fist to the gut. Who sent you? Spill! Joe got out his sample and dropped it on the floor and headed down the stairs. He took a deep breath and entered the lobby. Empty. Check out was swift; the lobby clerk was a different guy – old hound of a man with one of those faces that hangs off the bone like a wet sack of gib-lets – and there was no one to push the door open when he left. He counted his steps until he got to the car. She started right away, blessed old gal, and he repaid her by putting the gears in Drive without giving her a chance to warm up. He was around the corner in a minute and out of town in ten, heading up Highway Two again to his first client. When he stopped at a diner for a cup of coffee he took out the matches and looked inside. CARROTS WHEETIES TOMATOS MILK? |
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this is a work of fiction c. 2005 j. lileks. / joe home / lileks.com home