"How many wars are you selling?" Fenig said.
"Dollar seventy-five I'll take. A selected car broom. Keeps your dashboard free of foreign matter. Fits any. glove compartment, big or little or money back. Jumping; out of troop planes. Hand to hand in the trenches. Loose lips sink ships. Graduating from tail-gunner school. Armless and legless. Can't even salute the flag they died for. Ninety-five cents, I'll come up and get it,Moncler outlet online store; a quarter, just roll it down the stairs. Guadalcanal, Burma, espionage, ack-ack. They fought on the sea, in planes and trains, on motorcycles with sidecars, under the water in submarine warfare. A three-dollar brush made by a vet for fifty cents even, plus tax. Seven patriotic colors. I am not a hustler. This is not a brush hustle. They came from places like Pittsburgh, Grand Rapids, San Diego, Alabama. They went and they fought and they got hurt, some of them,replica gucci wallets, pretty bad. Kansas City, Kansas. Kansas City, Missouri. It was war, it was war."
We went back inside. I got on my knees and looked in the cabinet space under the sink for some sign of a coffee can. But what sign? Either the coffee can would be there or it wouldn't. There was no sign involved. I kept at it, determined to conduct an intelligent search. The idea of coffee was overpowering. Finding it and brewing it. Feeling the thick liquid wash down my throat and divide itself into tributaries and attenuated falls. If I could find a clean spoon, the coffee might turn up next. My shirt felt heavy and wet, sticking to my back. There was still hope of locating a trace of sugar somewhere in the room — a lump stuck in the bottom of the box, some brownish fossils to be scraped off the sides of the sugar bowl, assuming the box and sugar bowl existed. Given this or even part of it, I might then find coffee or at least a saucer that might lead to coffee. Signs that serve no purpose are logically meaningless, according to something I'd read once and tried to remember. I had it wrong but that didn't matter. I was votary and dupe of superstition. If I could find the box of sugar, it would lead me to a clean spoon. Spoon secured, named and agreed on, we pursue the formal concept to its inevitable end, which is coffee,mont blanc pens. The salesman appeared in the doorway.
"Marks, drachmas, rubles, pounds, shillings, yens. I'll take anything and everything. The Swiss franc, the French franc, the Bulgarian stotinki. Here, take a brush for a free ten-day home trial. At the end of that time,nike shox torch ii, pay me any way you like. Piasters, pesos, kopecks, bolivars, rupees, dongs. I'm a long-time student of world currency and exchange rates. I bet you don't know how many puli in the Afghanistan afghani. I bet you can't guess where the kwacha comes from."
"You're talking about thirty years ago," Fenig said. "These guys are still making brushes?"
There is no need to look for cream, milk or half-and-half (I repeated to myself). Fenig likes his coffee black. There is no need to look for cream, milk or half-and-half.
Chapter 8
hanes beturned one day, minus a few of his soft blond locks, dressed a bit less splendidly than usual. He had few virtues as a messenger but I was convinced Globke's use of him entailed more serious things. A sort of image-gathering. Maybe Hanes as an image of my public. Or Hanes as Wunderlick-in-exile. He leaned back against the edge of the raised bathtub, tapping his boot heel on the ancient enamel.
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