Strike two: Jim.
Mickey was incorrigible in his own way.
First, he continued collecting the leftovers of all the bar glasses that came in. He dumped their contents into his soda glass (they called it pop there in the Buckeye state) and when the glass, with just a tad of pop in it, was full, he’d drink it down in one quick series of gulps. Thus he was ever inebriated, or he was certainly high most of the time, which in and of itself was not such a terrible thing because it seemed to mellow him out.
But it pissed Jim off interminably. And Jim was ever one to be cross and wanting to fight. Then there was no telling when he would just go off since he was not right in the head.
Second, Mickey continued to try to pimp Bill with the two plump girls in his rooming house. He never went so far as to tell Bill that they wanted stud service and were willing to pay for it, but he came with glossies sometimes. The girls posed in different outfits. You couldn’t do nudies back then unless you had a Polaroid and Mickey couldn’t afford one of those, so he took pictures and had them developed. They were racy but not pornographic.
Sisters, not twins, the girls were usually made up and dressed nicely. They posed showing cleavage or thigh or both. Sometimes they were hugging each other suggestively, even kissing sometimes. In several of them they were fondling each other, or just about, but not quite, reaching up the other’s dress or skirt. In some they suggestively offered their derrieres.
To someone not knowing context, the pictures could have been construed as simple, innocent posing fun, two sisters messing around. Mickey passed them off to Bill as prospective pleasures to be had, the promise of a certain lasciviousness that also paid handsome dollar dividends.
Mickey’s drinking was a continual irritation for Jim. Jim wanted to drink but would never stoop to drinking someone else’s leftovers. A collection of them was even worse. A mixture was even more horrible as a concept. Unless he was desperate. So far he wasn’t that desperate.
Nevertheless, regardless of why, Mickey ticked Jim off incessantly. Maybe it was because Mickey was never unhappy unless he was strung out, and since there were almost always concoction mixtures, he was rarely strung out. Maybe it was because Jim was always ticked off anyway. He had been somebody once, a Derby winner owner-trainer who’d been kicked in the head by his horse, almost killed in fact and never right afterward. He’d been saved by a stable boy who was able to calm the horse down and steady him.
Jim always watched what Bill drank. He had gone off multiple times now, more times than you could count on one hand, each time telling Bill that he could sure use a beer, and when Bill, who could never give him one, didn’t, Jim went into a rant saying, “You really think you’re something, don’t you?” which actually couldn’t have been further from Bill’s reality since Bill really thought he was less than nothing. If Jim had only known that more than ninety per cent of what Bill did was just a cover-up for his insecurity, he might never have gone down the path he did with Bill.
Bill felt he always had to watch Jim, especially when he was hanging around the knife sheath. Those knives were sharp and dangerous, a fresh set professionally sharpened brought in every Wednesday. Marie had fallen victim to Alfreda’s haircut with one of those knives and Bill was ever making sure he didn’t fall victim to Jim who was, if nothing else, wholly unpredictable.
