The Final Circle of Paradise

After all, who is he – our client? He has no particular capabilities, and he doesn't need any. In earlier times, I read in a book, people used to be envious of each other – the neighbor is rolling in luxury and I can't save up for a refrigerator – how could you put up with that? They hung on like bulldogs to all kinds of trash, to money, to cushy jobs – they laid down their lives for such things. The guy with a foxier head or a stronger fist would wind up on top. But now life has become affluent and dull and there is a plenty of everything. What shall a man apply himself to? A man is not a fish, for all that, he is still a man and gets bored, but can't dream up something to do for himself. To do that you need special talents, you need to read a mountain of books, and how can he do that when they make him throw up. To become world-famous or to invent some new machine, that's something that wouldn't pop into his head, but even if it did, of what use would it be? Nobody really needs you, not even your own wife and children if you examine it honestly. Right, Eli? And you don't need anybody either. Nowadays, it seems, clever people think things up for you, something new like these aerosols, or the shivers, or a new dance. There is that new drink – it's called a polecat. Wanna me knock one together for you? So he downs some of this polecat, his eyes crawl out of their sockets, and he's happy. But as long as his eyes are in their sockets, life is just as dull as rainwater for him. There is an Intel that comes here to us, and every time he complains: Life, he says, is dull, my friends… but I leave here a new man; after, say, 'bullets' or 'twelve to one,' I see myself in a completely new light. Right, Eli? Everything becomes sweet all over again, food, drink, women."

"Yes," I said sympathetically. "I understand you very well. But for me it's all too stale."

"Slug is what he needs," said Eli in his bass voice.

"What's that again?"

"Slug is what I said."

Round-head puckered in distaste.

"Aw, come on, Eli. What's with you today?"

"I don't give a hoot for the likes of him," said Eli. "I just don't like these guys. Everything is insipid for him, nothing suits him."

"Don't listen to him," said round-head. "He hasn't slept all night and is very tired."

"Well, why not," I contradicted. "I am quite interested.

What is this slug?"

Round-head puckered his face again.

"It's not decent, you understand?" he said. "Don't listen to Eli, he is a good enough guy, a simple fellow, but it's nothing for him to lambaste a man. It's a bad term. Certain types have taken to writing it all over the walls. Hooligans, that's what they are, right? The snot-noses hardly know what it's about, but they write anyway. See how we had to plane off the railing? Some son of a bitch carved into it, and if I catch him, I'll turn his hide inside out. We do have women coming here too."

"Tell him," pronounced Eli, addressing himself to roundhead, "that he should get hold of a slug and quiet down.

Let him find Buba…"

"Will you shut up, Eli?" said round-head, now angry.

"Don't pay any attention to him."

Having heard the name Buba, I helped myself to another drink and settled more comfortably on the railing.

"What's it all about?" I said. "Some kind of secret vice?"

"Secret!" boomed Eli, and let out an obscene horselaugh.

Round-head laughed, too.

"Nothing can be a secret here," he said. "What had of secrets can there be when people are living it up at the age of fifteen? The dopes, the Intels, manufacture secrets. They'd like to get a fracas going on the twenty-eighth, they are all in a huddle, took some mine launchers out of town recently to hide them, like kids, honest to God! Right, Eli?"

"Tell him," the good simple fellow Eli was persisting.

"Tell him to be off to Hell and gone. And don't go protecting him. Just tell him to go to Buba at the Oasis and that's that."

He threw my wallet and form on the railing. I finished the whiskey. Round-head said soberly, "Of course, it's entirely up to you, but my advice is to stay away from that stuff. Maybe we'll all come to it someday, but the later, the better. I can't even explain it to you, I only feel that it is like the grave: never too late and always too soon."

"Thank you," I said.

"He even thanks you." Eli let loose another horselaugh.

"Have you seen anything like it! He thanks you!"

"We kept three dollars," said round-head. "You can tear up the blank. Or let me tear it up. God forbid something should happen to you, the police will come looking to us."

"To be honest with you," I said, putting the wallet away, "I don't understand how they haven't closed your office already."

"Everything is on the up and up with us," said round-head.

"If you don't want any, no one is forcing you. But if something should happen, it's your own fault."

"No one is forcing the drug addicts either," I retorted.

"That's some comparison! Drugs are a profiteering corrupt business!"