one can say for sure he didn’t make a pass at Aracknid’s unappetizing person.
Aracknid is a worthless chauffer, barely able to drive. On one occasion he ran down a pregnant woman in from the mountains with a load of charcoal on her back, and she miscarriaged a bloody,dead baby in the street , and Keif got out and sat on the curb stirring the blood with a stick while the police questioned Aracknid and finally arrested the woan for a violation of the Sanitary code.
Aracknid is a gimly unattractive young man with a long face of a strange, slate-blue color. He has a big nose and great yellow teeth like a horse. Anybody can find an attractive chauffeur, ut only Andrew Keif could have found Arcknid; Keif is brilliant, decadent young novelist who lives in a remodeled pissoir in the red light district of the Native Quarter.
The Zone is a single, vast building. The rooms are made of a plastic cement that bulges to accomodate people, but when too many crowd into one room there is a soft plop and someone squeezes through the wall right into the next house, the next bed that is, since the rooms are mostly bed where the business of the Zone is transacted . A hum of sex and commerce shakes the Zone like a vast hive:
“Two thirds of one percents. I won’t budge from that figure, not even for my bumpkins.”
But where are the bills of lading,lover?”
“Not where you’re looking pet.That’s too obvious.”
“A bale of levies with built-in falsie baskets.Made in Hollywood.”