Farewell, My Lovely & Stories [antikvár]

It was one of the mixed blocks over on Central Avenue, the blocks that are not yet all negro. I had just come out of a three-chair barber shop* where an agency* thought a relief barber* named Dimitrios Aleidis might be working. It was a small matter. His wife said she was willing to spend a little money to have him come home. I never found him, but Mrs Aleidis never paid me any money either. It was a warm day, almost the end of March, and I stood outside the barber shop looking up at the jutting neon sign of a second floor dine and dice emporium* called Florian's. A man was looking up at the sign too. He was looking up at the dusty windows with a sort of ecstatic fíxity of expression, like a hunky immigrant* catching his first sight of the Statue of Liberty.* He was a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck. He was ab out ten feet away from me. His arms hung loose at his sides and a forgottén cigar smoked behind his enormous fingers. Síim quiet negroes passed up and down the street and stared at him with darting side glances. He was worth looking at. He wore a shaggy borsalino* hat, a rough grey sports coat with white golf balls on it for buttons, a brown shirt, a yellow tie", pleated grey flannel slacks and alligator shoes with white explosions on the toes. From his outer breast pocket cascaded a show handkerchief of the same brilliant yellow as his tie. There were a couple of coloured feathers tucked into the band of his hat, but he didn't really need them. Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as incon-