Lay Down My Sword and Shield Read Online Free PDF

you really did it to me.”
    “Look, it was a shitty day for you. I should have been here to eat lunch with those bastards, or I should have called Bailey and told him to take care of it. But I’m going to change clothes now. We should go downstairs in a few minutes.”
    “You must have a very special clock to go by. It starts to work correctly when you feel the corner at your back.”
    “You ought to drink your highball.”
    “Why don’t you drink it? It makes you more electric and charming in public,” she said.
    “You’ve gotten it out pretty far in a short time.”
    “I might stretch it out so far that you ache.”
    “Isn’t this just spent effort? If you want to believe that you’ve won the ball game in the ninth inning, go ahead. Or maybe you would like me to kiss your ass in apology.”
    “You’ve done that without a need for apologizing. An analyst would have a wonderful time with you.”
    “I won’t go into embarrassing descriptions, but as I recall you enjoyed every little piece of it.”
    “Yes, I remember those sweet experiences. You tried to enact all the things you had learned in a Japanese whorehouse while you slobbered about two boys who died in a Chinese prison camp.”
    “You better shut it off in a hurry.”
    “What was the boy’s name from San Angelo and the Negro sergeant from Georgia?”
    “You don’t listen when I tell you something, do you?”
    “It’s just a little bit of recall from things you brought up. Didn’t you say they were buried in a latrine? In your words, to lend more American fertilizer to the Korean rice crop.”
    “Stop trying to fuck me over, Verisa.”
    “Are you going to hit me? That would make a perfect punctuation mark in my day.”
    “Just ease up on the batter a little bit.”
    “Don’t walk away, Hack. If you blow this for us, I’ll divorce you and sue for the home. Then I’ll repay you in the most fitting way I can think of. I’ll cover that historical cemetery of yours with concrete.”
    I took the bottle of whiskey and my glass from the bar and slammed the bedroom door behind me. I could feel the anger beating in my head and the veins swelling in my throat. I seldom became angry about anything, but this time she had reached inside me hard and had gotten a good piece between her nails. I drank out of the bottle twice and started to change clothes. My face was flushed with heat in the mirror. I kicked my trousers against the wall and pulled off my shirt, stripping the buttons. I stood in my underwear and had another drink, this time with measured sips. The whiskey began to flatten out inside me, and I felt a single drop of perspiration run down off an eyebrow. Hold it in, sonofabitch, I thought. The Lone Ranger never blows his Kool-Aid. You just give the sheriff a silver bullet and let Tonto pour you a drink. But Verisa had really been off her style this time. She had collected a valise of surgical tools during the day for an entry into all my vital organs. In fact, I didn’t know whether to mark this to her debit or credit. As I said, in the past she could always load all of her outrage into a quiet hypodermic needle, thrust subtly into the right place (her best probe, the one she used after I had done something especially painful to that private part of her soul, was to go limp and indifferent under me, her arms spread back on the pillows, during my disabling moment of climax).
    I had one more drink, just enough to go over the back of the tongue, then brushed my teeth, took three aspirins and two vitamin pills, and rinsed out my whiskey breath with Listerine. I dressed in an Italian silk shirt, a dark tie, and a pressed white suit, and rubbed the polish smooth on my boots with a damp towel. I lit a cigar and breathed out the smoke in the mirror. You’re all right, Masked Man, I thought.
    I heard Verisa open the front door, then the voices of Bailey and Senator Dowling.
    “Hack,” Verisa said, tapping her fingernails lightly on my door. I