The Adjustment by Scott Phillips Read Free Book Online Page B

Bibles when I was twelve, a real godsend for my budding career as a chronic onanist, which lasted until I was fifteen and started getting laid regularly.
    The severe, lipless relic manning the counter in the present day had stared at me as though offended by my very existence; he certainly lacked the hail-fellow-well-met demeanor that any sort of under-the-counter trade demands of a merchant, so I didn’t bother inquiring. Something came to me as I walked out the door, though, the memory of a wholesaler that used to provide me with pornographic photos in Rome: the Nonpareil Photographic Studio of Kansas City, Missouri.
    One night Park and I were along for the ride with Collins at a blind pig up near Newton that one of his high-rolling buddies had told him about. It was in a big farmhouse in a neighborhood on the outskirts of town, and it was better appointed than a lot of real bars I’d been in. The boss was in an expansive mood, after a long and friendly conversation with the proprietor regarding the ins and outs of rural lawbreaking. They established at length that bringing whores into the blind pig, even just for tonight, might jeopardize the barkeep’s delicate position with local law enforcement. It was decided that after a couple more drinks we would head for the Crosley Hotel just north of downtown and find some there.
    Collins stood with his arm on the mantle above the fireplace and smirked. “Admit it, boys, this is the best goddamn job you ever had.”
    Park nodded and I just smiled. Sure, it wasn’t exactly coal mining, and I was grateful to have a position that got me out of the house—when I’d left that evening, Sally was listening to “Baby Snooks” on KFH, and if I’d had to listen to a whole half hour of that shit I’d have blown my brains out—but this wasn’t the best job I ever had, not by a mile.
    In the army I used to look back at my pre-war self with a mixture of nostalgia and pity. What the hell had I thought I was accomplishing selling airplanes? The QM Corps gave me thrilling and lucrative work. Men needed the things I offered for sale. Women, some of them beautiful women, relied on me for protection and income, and the army relied on me to distribute whatever I wasn’t able to reroute and sell elsewhere. It was a good life, and by the time it came to its violent end I could see my sweet situation beginning to unravel. There would be no place for me in Italy after the war, without the army to protect my position and provide my clientele, and my stab wound—for which I managed to con my way into a Purple Heart—got me home months earlier than was right.
    So acting as bag man and babysitter for an alcoholic skirtchaser came in a poor second. Hell, I had a job as a kid selling pots and pans door to door that might give this one a run for its money.
     
    THE FRONT DESK man at the Crosley greeted Collins by name and told him to go right up. “Elevator’s broken, you’ll have to use the stairs.”
    The stairs smelled like a lioness in heat had pissed her way up to the fourth floor, by which time Collins was gasping. “What the hell happened to this place?” I asked. “This used to be a nice hotel.”
    “Whores and hopheads now,” Collins said between wheezes. He knocked on the door of room 406, which was answered by a tired looking forty-year-old with blonde bangs wearing a tattered silk robe that hung open, revealing a matching set of underwear underneath.
    “Benny called and said you was coming up, but he didn’t say you brought friends. Let me call a couple girls and we’ll all of us have a party.” The circles under her eyes were dark as bruises, and I suspected that once she doffed that robe we’d be treated to the sight of track marks inside her elbows.
    “I think I’m going to make an early night of it, boss.”
    “What the hell?” the old man said, his fury manifesting itself instantly and, as usual, without warning. That chopped-up ear was the color of a July