"That you know of," I said.
"Aye," he said. "That I know of."
I went over and joined Skip and Bobby. Bobby was wearing a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off. Around his neck was a blue plastic whistle on one of those lanyards of plastic braid that boys make at summer camp.
"The actor is feeling his way into the role," Skip said, aiming a thumb at Bobby.
"Oh?"
"I got a call-back on a commercial," Bobby said. "I'm a basketball referee, I'm with these kids at a playground. They all tower over me, that's part of the point of it."
"Everybody towers over you," Skip said. "What are they supposed to be selling? Because if it's deodorant, you want to wear a different sweatshirt."
"It's brotherhood," Bobby said.
"Brotherhood?"
"Black kids, white kids, Spanish kids, all united in brotherhood as they drive for the fuckin' hoop. It's some public-service thing, show it during slow spots on the Joe Franklin show."
"You get paid for this?" Skip demanded.
"Oh, shit, yes. I think the agencies donate their time, and the TV stations run it free, but the talent gets paid."
"The talent," Skip said.
"Le talent, c'est moi," Bobby said.
I ordered a drink. Skip and Bobby stayed with what they had. Skip lit a cigarette and the smoke hung in the air. My drink came and I sipped it.
"I thought you were going to make it an early night," Skip said. I said I'd been unable to sleep. "Because of tomorrow?"
I shook my head. "Just not tired yet. Restless."
"I get that way. Hey, actor," he said. "What time's your audition?"
"Supposed to be two o'clock."
"Supposed to be?"
"You can get there and sit around a lot. I'm supposed to be there at two."
"You be done in time to give us a hand?"
"Oh, no problem," he said. "These agency cats, they got to catch the five forty-eight to Scarsdale. Couple of pops in the bar car, then find out how Jason and Tracy did in school today."
"Jason and Tracy are on summer break, dumbbell."
"So he's got to see the postcard they sent home from camp. They go to this fancy camp in Maine, the postcards are already written by the staff, all they gotta do is sign them."
My boys would be going to camp in a couple of weeks. One of them had woven me a lanyard like the one Bobby wore. I had it somewhere, packed away in a drawer or something. Or was it still in Syosset? If I were a proper father, I thought, I'd wear the damned thing, whistle and all.
Skip was telling Bobby that he needed his beauty sleep.
"I'm supposed to look like a jock," Bobby said.
"We don't get you outta here, you're gonna look more like a truss." He looked at his cigarette, dropped it in what was left of his drink. "I never want to see you do that," he told me. "I never want to see either of you do that. Disgusting habit."
THE sky was lightening up outside. We walked slowly, not saying much. Bobby bobbed and weaved a ways ahead of us, dribbling an imaginary basketball, faking out an invisible opponent and driving for the hoop. Skip looked at me and shrugged. "What can I tell you?" he said. "The man is my friend. What else is there to say?"
"You're just jealous," Bobby said. "You got the height but you haven't got the moves. A good little man can fake you out of your socks."
"I wept because I had no shoes," Skip said solemnly, "and then I met a man who had no socks. What the hell was that?"
An explosion echoed half a mile or so to the north of us.
"Kasabian's mortar," Bobby said.
"Fucking draft-dodger," Skip said. "You wouldn't know a mortar from a pessary. I don't mean a pessary. What is it a pharmacist uses?"
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"A pestle," Skip said. "You wouldn't know a mortar from a pestle. That's not what a mortar sounds like."
"Whatever you say."
"It sounded like blasting for a foundation," he said. "But it's too early, the neighbors would kill anybody started blasting at this hour. I'll tell you, I'm glad it's done raining."
"Yeah, we had enough of it, didn't we?"
"I suppose we needed it," he said. "That's always what they say, isn't it? Every time it rains its ass off, somebody says how we needed it. Because the reservoirs are drying up, or else the farmers need it or something."
"This is a wonderful conversation," Bobby said. "You'd never get a conversation like this in a less sophisticated city."
"Fuck you," Skip said. He lit a cigarette and started coughing, got control of the cough and took another puff on the cigarette, this time without a cough. It was like a drink in the morning, I thought. Once you got one to stay down you were all right.
"The air's nice after a storm," Skip said. "I think it cleans it."
"Washes it," Bobby said.
"Maybe." He looked around. "I almost hate to say this," he said, "but it ought to be a beautiful day."
Chapter 15
At six minutes past eight, the phone on Skip's desk rang. Billie Keegan had been talking about a girl he'd met the previous year on a three-week holiday in the west of Ireland. He stopped his story in midsentence. Skip put his hand on the phone and looked at me, and I reached for the phone that sat on top of the file cabinet. He nodded once, a quick bob of the head, and we lifted the two receivers in unison.