Chapter 12 Chapter 11

Larry found a Negro woman in the hallway who told him wearily that Alice Underwood was probably making an inventory on the twenty-fourth floor.As he rode the elevator upstairs, he felt the eyes of the others in the elevator stealthily and cautiously brush his forehead.The wound was no longer bleeding, but there was an unsightly clot of blood on his forehead. The 24th floor is where a Japanese camera company works.Larry paced up and down the corridors for nearly twenty minutes, feeling like a horse from a herd of sheep.Directors from Western countries can be seen everywhere in the building, but there are many Japanese, and his 6.2-foot stature is more like a tall horse among sheep.The short men and women squinted up at the clotted blood on his forehead and the blood-stained jacket sleeves, with an unnerving oriental indifference.

A door peeped out from behind a tall fern with the words "Custodial and Housekeeping," and Larry finally decided that was the place he was looking for.He tried to turn the handle, but the door was unlocked, and he pushed it open and walked into the house.His mother was inside, in a rumpled gray uniform, elastic stockings and crepe shoes, her hair held tight by a black hairnet.With her back to Larry, she held a clipboard in one hand and appeared to be counting the bottles of spray cleaner that sat on the high shelf. A strong criminal urge made Larry turn and run away.Back to the garage two blocks from his mother's apartment to collect the two months' rent he had just handed over to Falker.Just walk in, move your body and dance.Where are you going to dance?anywhere.Bar Harbor, Maine, Tampa, Florida, Salt Lake City, Utah.Anywhere is a good place, as long as you leave this little soap-smelling room with ease.Whether it was from the fluorescent light or from the cut on his forehead, he had a goddamn headache.

Oh, stop whining, you nasty coward. "Hi, Mom," he said. She was slightly taken aback, but did not turn around. "So, Larry, you've found your way to Uptown." "Yes," he scuffed his foot back and forth on the floor, "I'm sorry. I should have called you last night." "Isn't it, good idea." "I'm with Buddy. We...er...we're hanging out. In town." "I guess that's it, otherwise it's not too bad." She hooked a small stool with her foot, stood on it, and began to count the floor wax bottles on the top shelf, counting them with her right thumb and index finger. lightly.She had to lift her feet as hard as she could to reach the bottles, and her dress was pulled up, revealing the brown edges of her stockings.Through the mesh stockings, he could see her clear thighs.He turned his eyes away, and his thoughts suddenly led him to Noah's third son, imagining what happened when the son saw his old father lying naked on the simple bed .After that, the poor man could only cut wood and sell water for a living.him and his offspring.This is why there are race riots today.Son, praise God.

"Is that why you came here to tell me?" she asked, turning to look at him for the first time. "Oh, I wanted to tell you where I was last night, and to say sorry. It sucks that I forgot to tell you." "Yeah," she went on, "yes, you're bad, Larry. Do you think I'll forget?" He blushed. "Mom, listen to me." "You're bleeding. The stripper threw her fig leaf at you?" She turned to the shelf again, tapped the top bottle, and made a mark on the clipboard. "Someone took two bottles of floor wax last week," she said. "Lucky guy."

"I'm here to apologize!" Larry raised his voice.She didn't jump up, but he couldn't help himself a little. "Yes, then you're done apologizing. Damn floor wax, Mr. Chauhan's going to eat us if anyone else gets his way." "I didn't fight in a bar, or go to a strip party. It had nothing to do with it, it was just..." His voice trailed off. She turned her face away, her eyebrows raised like two crescents, in her usual sarcastic way, which Larry was all too familiar with. "Just what?" "This...", he couldn't think of a convincing lie for a while (the quick reaction ability to make up lies is not good yet). "It's a spatula."

"Did someone take you for an omelet? You and Buddy had a good night on the town, didn't you?" He always forgets that he is far from her opponent, not in the past, and probably never will be in the future. "It was a girl, Ma. She threw it at me." "She's probably a sharpshooter," Alice Underwood said, then turned away again. "That nasty Conzuela hid the dispatches again. It's not how good they are; we never have all the things we need, and there's a lot we can't handle." "Mom, are you mad at me?" She put her hands on her waist suddenly, and her shoulders sank.

"Don't be mad at me," he whispered, "don't be mad, okay? Huh?" She turned her face, and Larry saw an unnatural gleam in her eyes, which might have been natural enough, but it was certainly not fluorescent light, and again he heard the final words of the oral hygienist: You are not nice guy.If it was just to talk nonsense to her, why would he bother to come home... It doesn't matter if her attitude is good or bad. "Larry," she said softly, "Larry, Larry, Larry." For a split second he thought she wasn't going to say anything more; he even allowed himself to hope so.

"That's all you say, don't you? 'Don't be mad at me, please, Mom, don't be mad'? I heard you sing on the radio, I don't like that song, but I'm still proud of you .People ask me if that's really your son, and I say yes, that's Larry. I tell them you've always been able to sing, and that's not a lie, is it?" He shook his head pitifully, not allowing himself to speak. "I told them, in junior high, you took Donnie Roberts' guitar once, and after only half an hour of learning, you played better than him, even though he's been learning to play since second grade. You Talented, Larry, no one ever told me that, and you never did. I'm sure you know, too, because I never heard you whine about that one thing. Then you go, Did I ever blame you for that? No. Young lads and girls, they're all gone. It's the natural order of the world. Sometimes it sucks. But it has to be. Then you come back, somebody Tell me why? No. You came back because, whether or not your record was a hit, you got into trouble on the West Coast."

"I'm not in any trouble!" he retorted angrily. "You don't have to deny it, I can see the signs. I've been your mother for a long time, and you can't hide it from me, Larry. The trouble is, there's this one thing you've been looking for, but you just can't turn it around." Turn around and look. Sometimes I think, you step on shit when you cross the street. God forgive me for saying that because God knows it's true. Am I crazy? No. Am I disappointed? Yes. I thought you'd repent. But you didn't. You weren't a kid when you left, but you were still childish in your bones; you came back the same, except for your haircut. You know what I mean to you What do you think of the reason for coming back?"

He looked at her and wanted to speak, but he knew that if he did speak, it would drive both of them out of their minds. "Don't cry, Mom, eh?" "The way I see it, you came home because you had nowhere else to go. You can't think of anyone else who would take you. I never said anything about you to anyone else, Larry, not even my own sister. No exception, but since you forced me to say it, I will tell you clearly what I think of you. You only know how to take, and you have always only known to take. It seems that when I was pregnant with you, God gave your other Part of it was let go. You're not bad, that's not what I meant. We had to live somewhere after your father died, and if you had bad genes in you, you'd have been bad, God knows. In Quay Ernes, that time you wrote an obscene word in the hall downstairs in Casteel Road, I think that was the worst thing I ever saw you do. Do you remember?"

he remembers.She chalked the word on his forehead and asked him to walk around the street 3 times.He never wrote that word, or any other, on the wall of the building after that. "The worst part is, Larry, you mean well. Sometimes I think it would be a blessing if you were a little bit worse. Yes, you seem to know what's wrong, but you Don't know how to punish mistakes. Neither do I. When you were little, I tried everything I knew, including writing that word on your forehead...Since then, I've become Desperate, otherwise I would never have done such a bad thing to you. The reason why you came home to see me is because you understand that I have to give, not for everyone, but for you alone." "I'm going to move out," he said, slurring each word like a dry cotton ball. "Moving this afternoon." As soon as the words came out of his mouth it dawned on him that he might not even have the money to move now, at least until Warner sent him his next royalty check, or after feeding the hungriest gang of hounds in L.A. The rest of it was sent to him like this before.The only expenses that needed cash right now were the rent on two Mitsubishi driveways and a huge sum that had to be paid by Friday, unless he wanted that friendly tall neighbor hunting him around, which he didn't want to be.He remembered how innocent the orgy had been in the beginning of last night, him and Buddy, Buddy's fiancée, and Buddy's fiancée's friend, the oral hygienist, a nice girl from the Bronx, La Here, you'll love her, great sense of humor.After the carnival, he was even more cash-strapped.No, exactly, he's out of cash now.Thinking of this, he couldn't help feeling a little scared.Where could he go now without his mother?to the hotel?As long as there is a hotel that is slightly better than the third-rate inn, the janitor will laugh when he sees him and tell him that he has gone to the wrong place.Well-dressed now, but those people will know, those bastards will always know, they can smell empty wallets. "Don't go," she said mildly. "I hope you don't, Larry. I bought some food on purpose, as you may have seen. I think we can play gin tonight." "Mom, you can't play with juniper," he said, smiling slightly. "A point for a penny, and I'll make you lose your brat." "Maybe, if I give you 400 points." "Listen to the kid," she said gently sarcastically, "if I give you 400 points. Stay, Larry. How about it?" "Okay," he said.For the first time in the day, he felt good, really good.A faint voice whispered inside him: You're reaching out again, Larry the Recalcitrant, betting on freedom.But he didn't want to listen.Anyway, it was his mother, and she begged him to keep it.Of course, she did say some harsh words before begging him to stay, but begging is begging, right? "Let me tell you, I'm buying tickets for the Fourth of July game. I'll just take a fraction of the money I got to win you tonight." "You can't even win a fraction," she said kindly, turning to the shelf. "There's a men's bathroom in the lobby downstairs. Why don't you go and wash the blood off your forehead? Then take 10 from my wallet." Dollars, go to a movie. There are a few good theaters on 3rd Ave, you just don't go to the sleazy places around 49th Street and Broadway." "I'll pay you in a few days," Larry said. "My record is No. 18 this week. I just checked the papers." "That's great. If you're so rich, why don't you buy a copy of the movie instead of going to a movie theater?" Suddenly something stuck in his throat.He cleared his throat, but the thing refused to move. "Well, never mind," she said, "my tongue is like a curmudgeon horse, and once I start, I've got to keep running till I'm exhausted. You know that. Take $15 Well, Larry, it's a loan. I think I'll get it back, one way or another." "You will," he said.He walked over and tugged at the hem of her dress like a little boy.She looked down at him.Larry tiptoed to kiss her cheek. "I love you, Mom." She seemed taken aback, not by his kiss, nor by his words or the tone of his voice. "Well, I know that, Larry," she said. "About what you said, there's trouble right now, I was, sort of, but it wasn't..." Her voice immediately became cold and severe, so cold that he couldn't help but startled. "I don't want to hear these things." "Okay," he said, "let me ask you, what's the best movie theater around here?" "Luke Twain," she replied, "but I don't know what it's in." "Never mind. You know my point? There are three things you can get anywhere in America, but you want the best and you have to come to New York." "Really, Mr. New York Times Reviewer? What three things?" "Movies, baseball, and Neddy's hot dogs." she laughed. "You're not stupid, Larry you never were." So he went downstairs to the bathroom, washed the blood off his forehead, then went back upstairs and kissed his mother again.Then withdraw $15 from her frayed black wallet.Then went to the Roux Cinema and saw a story about a crazy ghost named Freddie Cruedy.The evil spirit sucks some teenagers into the quicksand of their own dreams, and in the end all but the protagonist die.Freddie Cruedy seems to be dead too, but it's hard to say, the movie name still has Roman numerals, and I don't know how many sequels will be released.Larry thought the man with the razor on his fingertip might be coming back, but little did he know that a constant voice in the back seat had announced the end of everything: there would be no more movie endings, not even for long, not even There will be no more movies. In the seat behind Larry, a man was coughing.