Lynette was in street clothes sitting at the next mirror. She had her head in a copy of Look.

"If I had the slightest sense," Brenda told her, "I'd get what I'm owed and just scram. I have a seven-year old and a four-year old and I am half the time too tired to say hello."

Lynette turned a page. She said, "I will tell you this Bobby Kennedy is right up my alley. Bobby is the one who could make me crazy. He has got this little hard gleam. Ten minutes with Bobby, I am out of my head."

"He doesn't do a thing for me."

"He could drive me into wah wah land."

"Where is that, Lynette?"

"He has got this little meanness in the eye but he doesn't really know it like?"

"I think he knows it," Brenda said. "Give me his brother any day. Jack would be better in bed. I like a lover with some shoulder to him. I stay away from these rabbity types."

"Bobby's an athalete."

"The President is mature to handle a woman like us. Not that I'm ready to settle down with the man."

"You need one of those bouffant hairdos like Jackie."

"I need more than that."

"You got the knockers, Brenda."

"Tit tit tit. This is my Achilles heel you're pointing out. Too much talent up front. It means a bunch of trouble."

"What's he do anyway, the Attorney General?"

"Are you kidding? He's the top cop."

"Top cop or top cock?"

"Same difference," Brenda said.

There was some kind of commotion out front. They could hear a few voices and a glass or bottle breaking. Lynette turned a page.

"Do you believe what they say about tell a person exactly when you were born, to the hour and the minute, and they can figure out everything about you?"

"I smell a fish, to quote a maxim," Brenda said.

The disturbance, whatever it was, grew louder. You feel these things in the walls. Brenda put on her robe and went to the end of the hall and looked out. Between the bar and the entranceway there was a flurry of bodies and arms, maybe four guys including Jack who were physically propelling a man who looked like he combed his hair with firecrackers. It now developed that Jack wanted to throw the man down the stairs. The others were trying to prevent this as extreme. Brenda waited until the odd-job boy lost his place in the moving knot of people and came off to the side, shaking a hand that may have been bitten.

"What is it?" Brenda said.

"This guy like grab-assed one of the waitresses. You know, felt her going by."

"Do we kill people for this?"

"You know Jack when it comes to abusing the girls. He about flipped sky-high."

Jack wrestled the man away from the others and the two of them went quick-walking down the narrow stairs, actually out of control, banging off the handrail, almost pitching forward to the street.

The bar crowd went after, hurrying down single-file and loud. Brenda took a deep drag on the cigarette and went back to finish her talk.

Out on the street Jack knocked the guy down. He went after him with his feet, kicking in a fastidious way as if trying to shake dog matter off his shoe. The guy skittered away and ran down the street, breaking through a line of people in front of the club next door, where an amateur strip night was going on. Jack went after him, followed by five or six others from the Carousel. The man was much faster but turned halfway down the block and was ready to fight. It made no sense to anyone and only got Jack madder. Jack charged into him swinging. The sheer bulk and force of the attack knocked the guy down. Jack kicked at him twice and the guy grabbed Jack's ankle and twisted him down to the pavement in slow motion. Then he started crawling toward a parking sign. Jack was on his knees and grabbed the guy's leg to keep him from reaching the signpost. Someone from the bar crowd tried to break Jack's grip, speaking soothingly to Jack. The guy kept struggling toward the sign. This was the clear meaning of what was going on. If he could only reach the sign. Two men from the bar crowd broke the fighters apart but Jack got in two kicks at the guy's ribs. The guy stood up, eyes averted. His pants were somehow unbuckled. Jack punched him hard in the head over the shoulders of the men between them and the guy walked out in the middle of the street and stood there, making the cars go around him. He fixed his clothes. He stood out there in traffic. He would not look at the men on the sidewalk, their chests pumping from the run and scuffle.

Jack went back down the street. When he reached the line of people outside the other club, he started shaking hands and giving out cards with the Carousel name and hours. Then he got into his white Olds and drove off to clear his head.

Jack's car was a movable slum. His dogs had chewed up the seat covers and mats. They'd eaten the stuffing inside the rear seat, exposing the springs. There were paw marks on the windows. There were eight empty liquor cartons tilted and wedged across the rear seat. He had jars of diet food rolling across the floor when he stopped or turned. He had a couple of hundred dollars on top of the dashboard, folded in butcher wrap stained with lamb-chop blood. There were extra Preludins in the glove compartment plus a bathing cap, a number of unpaid tickets, a number of address books, some loose condoms, a set of brass knuckles and a TV Guide.

He tuned in KLIF, looking for a disc jockey called the Weird Beard. He needed a familiar voice to calm him down.

He drove around downtown Dallas. It happens a few times where I have to pummel one of these guys who causes trouble in the club. Once they get you cowered to that extent, you are physically doomed. He felt his jacket for the. 38, which was tucked into a Merchants State Bank moneybag along with three thousand dollars in recent receipts tightly rolled in pink rubber bands.

It was the talk with Jack Karlinsky that probably got him inflamed with the guy who put his hand on what's-her-name. He had to get the money. He had no other source. There were debts and harassments in every direction. Even with forty thousand dollars in his hands tomorrow, the problems were not solved. He had to get the business built up. He had this union thing with the girls. He had an extortionist of long standing on the West Coast who'd already turned down his request for a loan and now Karlinsky was leaning the same way.

So the jacket is mohair. You should have bought two. One to shit on; one to cover it up.

He had a deal going where you put a token in a machine and it washes your car. His brother Sam sold one of his two washaterias and was looking with interest at this machine. It would never happen but it could. He'd tried different things with different brothers, from selling salt and pepper shakers to nice-looking busts of FDR. He sold costume jewelry, sewing machine attachments and cures for arthritis from Chicago to San Francisco.

Thirty years with a fishbone in her throat.

Weird Beard said, "I know what you think. You think I'm making it up. I'm not making it up. If it gets from me to you, it's true. We are for real, kids. And this is the question I want to leave with you tonight. Who is for real and who is sent to take notes? You're out there in the depths of the night, listening in secret, and the reason you're listening in secret is because you don't know who to trust except me. We're the only ones who aren't them. This narrow little radio band is a route to the troot. I'm not making it up. There are only two things in the world. Things that are true. And things that are truer than true. We need this little private alley where we can meet. Because this is Big D, which stands for Don't be Dissimilar. Am I coming in all right? Is my signal clear? We're the sneaky little secret they're trying to uncover. Do you think I'm making it up? I'm not making it up. Weird Beard says, Eat your cereal with a fork. Do your homework in the dark. And trust your radio before you trust your mother."