THIRTY-NINE

“Wonder which one he was,” Tom said.

“That money stinks,” Dortmunder said.

“No money stinks, Al,” Tom said.

The little white car crept through the night, twin beams of light across the barren land, bouncing and bucking away from Cronley and its lone aching-headed domiciliary.

FORTY

When Andy Kelp walked into the OJ Bar & Grill on Amsterdam Avenue at six in the evening, the regulars were discussing the proposition that the new big buildings that had been stuck up over on Broadway, one block to the west, were actually spaceships designed and owned by aliens. “It’s for a zoo,” one regular was suggesting.

“No no no,” a second regular said, “that isn’t what I meant.” So he was apparently the one who’d raised the suggestion in the first place. “What I meant is for the aliens to come here.”

A third regular frowned at that. “Aliens come here? When?”

“Now,” the second regular told him. “They’re here already.”

The third regular looked around the joint and saw Kelp trying to attract the attention of Rollo the bartender, who was methodically rinsing seven hundred million glasses and was off in a world of his own. The regular frowned at Kelp, who frowned back. The regular returned to his friends. “I don’t see no aliens,” he said.

“Yuppies,” the second regular told him. “Where’d you think they came from? Earth?”

“Yuppies?” The third regular was a massive frowner. “How do you figure that?”

“I still say,” said the first regular, “it’s for a zoo.”

“You need a zoo,” the second regular told him. “Turn yourself in.” To the third regular he said, “It’s the yuppies, all right. Here they are all of a sudden all over the place, every one of them the same. Can actual adult human beings live indefinitely on ice cream and cookies? No. And did you ever see what they drink?”

“Foamy stuff,” the third regular said thoughtfully. “And green stuff. And green foamy stuff.”

“Exactly,” the second regular said. “And you notice their shoes?”

The first regular said, dangerously, “Whadaya mean, turn myself in?”

“Not in here,” Rollo said absently. He seemed to look at Kelp, who waved at him, but apparently Rollo’s eyes were not at the moment linked up with his brain; he went on with his glass-rinsing.

Meanwhile, the second regular had ignored the first regular’s interruption, and was saying, “All yuppies, male and female, they all wear those same weird shoes. You know why?”

“Fashion,” the third regular said.

“To a zoo, you mean?” demanded the first regular. “Turn myself in at a zoo? Is that what you mean?”

“Fashion?” echoed the second regular. “How can it be fashion to wear a suit and at the same time these big clunky weird canvas sneakers? How does it work out to be fashion for a woman to put on all kindsa makeup, and fix her hair, and put on a dress and earrings and stuff around her neck, and then put on those sneakers?”

“So what’s your reading on this?” the third regular asked, as the first regular, zoo partisan, stepped slowly and purposefully off his stool and removed his coat.

“Their feet are different,” the second regular explained. “On accounta they’re aliens. Human feet won’t fit into those shoes.”

The first regular took a nineteenth-century pugilistic stance and said, “Put up your dukes.”

“Not in here,” Rollo said calmly, still washing.

“Rollo?” Kelp said, wagging his fingers, but Rollo still wasn’t switched to ordinary reception.

Meantime, the other regulars were gazing upon the pugilist with surprised interest. “And what,” the second regular asked, “is this all about?”

“You say it isn’t a zoo,” the pugilist told him, “you got me to answer to. You make cracks about me and zoos, we’ll see what happens next.”

“Well, wait a minute,” the third regular said. “You got a zoo theory?”

“I have,” the pugilist told him while maintaining his fists-up, wrists-bent, elbows-cocked stance, one foot in front of the other.

“Well, let it fly,” the third regular invited him. “Everybody gets to say their theory.”

“Naturally,” the second regular said. He’d been gazing at those upraised fists with interest but no particular concern.

The pugilist lowered his fists minimally. “Naturally?”

“Rollo,” said Kelp.

“You got an idea that’s better than yuppies,” the second regular told the pugilist, “let’s have it.”

The ex-pugilist lowered his arms. “It is yuppies,” he said. “Only it’s different.”

The other regulars gave him all their attention.

“Okay,” the zoo man said, looking a little self-conscious at being given the respectful hearing he’d been demanding, “the thing is this: you’re right about those new buildings being spaceships.”

“Thank you,” the second regular said with dignity.

“But they’re like roach motels,” the ex-pugilist said. “They attract yuppies. Little tiny rooms, loft beds, no moldings; it’s what they like. See, the aliens, they got these zoos all over the universe, all kindsa creatures, but they never had human beings before, because there weren’t any human beings that could live under zoo conditions. But yuppies do it naturally!”

“Rollo!” insisted Kelp.

“So, what,” asked the third regular, “is your reading of the situation?”

“Once all the buildings are completely rented out,” the ex-pugilist told them, “they take off, like ant farms, they deliver yuppies all over the universe to all the different zoos.”

“I don’t buy it,” the second regular said. “I still buy mine. The yuppies are the aliens. You can tell by their feet.”

“You know, but wait a minute now,” the third regular said. “Botha these theories end at the same place. And I like the place. At the end, the new buildings and all the yuppies are both gone.”

With a surprised look, the second regular said, “That’s true, isn’t it?”

“Spaceship buildings,” agreed the ex-pugilist, “fulla yuppies, gone.”

This idea was so pleasing to everyone that conversation stopped briefly so they could all contemplate this future world—soon, Lord—when the yuppies and their warrens would all be away in some other corner of the universe.

Kelp took the opportunity of this silence to say, very loudly, “Well, Rollo, looka this! You got a customer here!”

Rollo lifted his head at that, at last, but then he looked past Kelp toward the door, saying, “Well, if it isn’t the beer and salt.”

“No, I’m the—” Kelp started, but was interrupted by a voice saying, “Hey, there, Andy, whadaya say?”

Kelp turned to see Stan Murch, a stocky open-faced guy with carrot-colored hair who’d just come in. Approaching the bar, waving amiably at Rollo, Stan said, “Don’t tell me the Williamsburg Bridge is open.”

“I wasn’t,” Kelp said.

Rollo brought a freshly rinsed glass full of beer to Stan, took a saltshaker from the back bar, and plunked it down beside the beer, saying, “The rent is paid now, all right. The beer and salt is here.”

Stan didn’t seem to mind this badinage, if that’s what it was. “A little salt in the beer,” he explained, “gives you the head right back, when it goes flat.”

“Most people,” Rollo told him, “finish their beer before it goes flat. Then they have another.”

“I’m a driver,” Stan said. “I gotta watch my intake.”

“Uh-huh,” said Rollo. At long last, he looked at Kelp and said, “The other bourbon’s in back already. I gave him your glass.”

“A nice clean glass, I bet,” Kelp said.

“Uh-huh,” said Rollo.

Stan picked up his beer and his salt, and he and Kelp walked together down the bar, past the regulars, who were now discussing whether the alien yuppies had come to earth for tofu or had they brought it with them. Along the way, Stan said, “The Williamsburg Bridge is a menace. The reason I’m late, I hadda come to Manhattan twice.”