some idea what it would be like to live inside an amplified guitar. He only hit his head slightly while getting out from under, but then eased his feelings by hitting the alarm clock's head very hard.
He struggled to his feet, stiff in many joints, and hobbled into the bathroom. Back in the living room, he found his clothes on the chair where he'd put them last night, and dressed, ignoring as best he could the sand behind his eyelids.
He'd hoped Tina would be up, so he could start his campaign of worming his way into her confidence (and nothing else), but she was still asleep, or at least still in bed, those long legs, that long lithe torso, that long and beautiful face framed on the pillow by waves of thick almost-black hair. So he left home early instead, planning to have a diner breakfast somewhere along the way.
He walked quite a while, wanting the exercise, needing to work his mistreated body as well as his overloaded mind. As for his body, he found that everything eventually loosened up except the tense muscles across the top of his shoulders and the back of his neck, as though a wooden hanger had been surgically implanted there while he slept. While he dozed. And as for his mind, last night's conclusions — take responsibility, spy on the spies, see it out here in the city instead of spending the weekend at the beach, stop the assassination — still seemed to him right, though perhaps not quite as easy as, lying on the floor, he might have thought.
He found a not very good breakfast and ate not very much of it, then went on to the office, arriving early, and tried to concentrate on what he was supposed to be doing here, the statistical breakdowns on the results of the new campaign in selected parts of the country. Generally it was doing well in the southwest, poorly in the southeast, so-so in the northwest. Why? Why these regional differences? Why didn't people just stop making trouble? Everybody go out and buy the same thing and stop making us
think
about you.
At ten-thirty his phone rang and it was Eve: "Got him," she said.
"What?"
"You know what we talked about."
And then he did. "Oh, right! You got it? Really?"
"And truly. I told you Dick Welsh could find out. His address is 856A East Second Street."
"Not a great address," Josh said. Already he didn't like the idea of going there.
"It's a theater," she said.
Again he was lost. "And he
lives
in it?"
"This is where Dick is so wonderful," she said. "The company couldn't get insurance, for all their lights and sets and costumes and things, because they're such a marginal operation, not unless somebody was living there. So they got all kinds of variances from the city, and put in a little apartment, and Mitchell lives there, behind the stage, and that way they can get insurance. No wonder your friend couldn't find him."
"Let's hope nobody else can," Josh said.
The Good Rep Classic Theatrical Company was in half of the bottom of an old tenement on the Lower East Side, the part of town that has been the first home in America for immigrants from all over the world for nearly two hundred years. This southern end of the island of Manhattan is one of the two parts of town that extend east farther than the numbered avenues can accommodate. Uptown, east of First Avenue, there's York Avenue, a pretty good neighborhood, with the Mayor's residence, Grade Mansion, toward one end and the Kamastan Mission to the United Nations at the other, but downtown the eastern bloat is more pronounced, creating, east of First Avenue, a new Avenue A, then B, then C, and even D before the East River puts a stop to it.
Alphabet City, it's called, and as a neighborhood it could not be more mixed. The remnants of the waves of immigration can still be seen, fused with newer arrivals. Parts of the area have become more valuable, but it still contains plenty of pockets of poverty.
Poverty and art have always been more than nodding acquaintances, so another part of life in
He struggled to his feet, stiff in many joints, and hobbled into the bathroom. Back in the living room, he found his clothes on the chair where he'd put them last night, and dressed, ignoring as best he could the sand behind his eyelids.
He'd hoped Tina would be up, so he could start his campaign of worming his way into her confidence (and nothing else), but she was still asleep, or at least still in bed, those long legs, that long lithe torso, that long and beautiful face framed on the pillow by waves of thick almost-black hair. So he left home early instead, planning to have a diner breakfast somewhere along the way.
He walked quite a while, wanting the exercise, needing to work his mistreated body as well as his overloaded mind. As for his body, he found that everything eventually loosened up except the tense muscles across the top of his shoulders and the back of his neck, as though a wooden hanger had been surgically implanted there while he slept. While he dozed. And as for his mind, last night's conclusions — take responsibility, spy on the spies, see it out here in the city instead of spending the weekend at the beach, stop the assassination — still seemed to him right, though perhaps not quite as easy as, lying on the floor, he might have thought.
He found a not very good breakfast and ate not very much of it, then went on to the office, arriving early, and tried to concentrate on what he was supposed to be doing here, the statistical breakdowns on the results of the new campaign in selected parts of the country. Generally it was doing well in the southwest, poorly in the southeast, so-so in the northwest. Why? Why these regional differences? Why didn't people just stop making trouble? Everybody go out and buy the same thing and stop making us
think
about you.
At ten-thirty his phone rang and it was Eve: "Got him," she said.
"What?"
"You know what we talked about."
And then he did. "Oh, right! You got it? Really?"
"And truly. I told you Dick Welsh could find out. His address is 856A East Second Street."
"Not a great address," Josh said. Already he didn't like the idea of going there.
"It's a theater," she said.
Again he was lost. "And he
lives
in it?"
"This is where Dick is so wonderful," she said. "The company couldn't get insurance, for all their lights and sets and costumes and things, because they're such a marginal operation, not unless somebody was living there. So they got all kinds of variances from the city, and put in a little apartment, and Mitchell lives there, behind the stage, and that way they can get insurance. No wonder your friend couldn't find him."
"Let's hope nobody else can," Josh said.
The Good Rep Classic Theatrical Company was in half of the bottom of an old tenement on the Lower East Side, the part of town that has been the first home in America for immigrants from all over the world for nearly two hundred years. This southern end of the island of Manhattan is one of the two parts of town that extend east farther than the numbered avenues can accommodate. Uptown, east of First Avenue, there's York Avenue, a pretty good neighborhood, with the Mayor's residence, Grade Mansion, toward one end and the Kamastan Mission to the United Nations at the other, but downtown the eastern bloat is more pronounced, creating, east of First Avenue, a new Avenue A, then B, then C, and even D before the East River puts a stop to it.
Alphabet City, it's called, and as a neighborhood it could not be more mixed. The remnants of the waves of immigration can still be seen, fused with newer arrivals. Parts of the area have become more valuable, but it still contains plenty of pockets of poverty.
Poverty and art have always been more than nodding acquaintances, so another part of life in
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