you! I got myself hid good!’ When the roll is called up yonder we’ll be there, right?”
Joe looked at the Sailor and spread his hands in the
junky shrug.
The Sailor spoke in his feeling voice that reassembles in your head, spelling out the words with cold fingers:
“Your connection is broken, kid.”
The boy shied. His street-boy face, tom with black scars of junk, retained a wild, broken innocence; shy animals peering out through grey arabesques of terror.
“I don’t dig you, Jack.”
The Sailor leapt into sharp, junky focus. He turned back his coat lapel, showing a brass hypo needle covered with mold and verdigris. “Retired for the good of the
service. . . . Sit down and have a blueberry crumb pie on the expense account. Your monkey loves it. . . . Make his coat glossy.”
The boy felt a touch on his arm across eight feet of morning lunch room. He was suddenly siphoned into the booth, landing with an inaudible shlup. He looked into
the Sailor’s eyes, a green universe stirred by cold black currents.
“You are agent, mister?”
“I prefer the word . . . vector.” His sounding laughter vibrated through the boy’s substance.
“You holding, man? I got the bread. . . .”
“I don’t want your money, Honey: I want your Time.”
“I don’t dig.”
“You want fix? You want straight? You wanta, nooood?”
The Sailor cradled something pink and vibrated out of focus.