runs up and down on top of the bar, swings from drapes and chandeliers.. . .
A. J .: “You’ll straighten up and shit right or you won’t be inna condition to shit one way or the other.” Stooge: “You ought to be ashamed of yourself uphe settin’ A. J. after all he’s done for you.”
A. J.: “Ingrates! Every one of them ingrates! Take it from an old queen.”
Of course no one believes this cover story. A. J. claims to be an “independent,” which is to say: “Mind your own business.” There are no independents any more.
. . . The Zone swarms with every variety of dupe but there are no neutrals there. A neutral at A. J.’s level is It of course unthinkable.. ..
ie Hassan is a notorious Liquefactionist and suspect to be a secret Sender—“Shucks, boys,” he says with a disarming grin, “I’m just a blooming old cancer and I gotta proliferate.” He picks up a Texas accent associating with Dry Hole Dutton, the Dallas wildcatter, and he wears cowboy boots and ten-gallon hat at all times indoors and out. . . . His eyes are invisible behind black glasses, his face smooth and blank as wax above a wellcut suit made entirely from immature high denomination bank notes. (Bank notes are in fact currency, but they must mature before they can be negotiated. . . .
Bank notes run as high as one million clams a note.) “They keep hatching out all over me,” he says shyly.. . . “It’s like, gee, I don’t know how to say it. It’s like  was a Mummy scorpion carrying those little baby notes around on my warm body and feeling them grow. . . .Gosh I hope I don’t bore you with all this.”