Straight Cut Read Online Free PDF Page A

up the check and put it in my pocket. Why was I doing this? Why did the chicken cross the road? Screw it. I seemed to be getting drunk.
    “Oh yeah,” Kevin said. “Lauren says hello back, by the way.”
    I looked at him. My, they were seeing a lot of each other. She was sleeping with him again; I could practically smell it. Kevin looked like he was going to go on with the subject. I put my hand on the knife in my pocket. If he started some sort of weird confessional about Lauren I could always jump across the table and slit his throat. No, no good. Get caught for sure.
    And now Kevin was running down names and numbers of people in Rome. I took out my book and wrote down all the information. Circumstantial evidence indicated that I’d taken this job. Then we were sitting there over our half-empty glasses, without another word to say to each other.
    “So,” Kevin said. “Bon voyage, I guess.” He looked at his watch.
    I pulled the knife out of my pocket and hit the slide. Zot!
    “Jesus, what’s that?” Kevin said.
    I was crazy. Too many drinks, and a bit of trouble focusing my eyes. I looked down my nose at the point of the knife and saw Kevin’s face somewhere beyond it.
    “Present for you,” I said. I thunked the knife into the cutting board where the salt had been. It went in an easy inch, like the wood was butter, and shivered when I took my hand away.
    “Gee whiz,” Kevin said. “What did I do to deserve a nice present like that?”
    “Let’s say you pay the tab,” I said. Not a great exit line, but the best I could come up with on short notice. I got up and touched Kevin lightly on the shoulder and started walking away down Tenth Avenue, no particular destination in mind. Two or three blocks, and I remembered that it’s bad luck to give someone a knife. You’re supposed to give a penny back to ward it off, and Kevin hadn’t done that. Of course, I did have my certified check in my pocket. But somehow I don’t think you can buy out a superstition with a check.

3
    B ACK AROUND 14TH STREET somewhere I walked into a pizza stand and had a slice of Sicilian with a double handful of plastic mushrooms on it and a vicious cup of coffee, about two days old. I was hoping that the big wad of crust might soak up some of all that bourbon and tequila, and it seemed to work. My brain began to come back. And I began to conjure up ideas for getting off the street.
    I still had the master lease on an apartment in Brooklyn. The place was sublet, but I kept keys and couch privileges there, though I was supposed to give more than five minutes’ notice before I showed up. The man in the place was a slight acquaintance, but I didn’t feel much like chatting with him at present. I was strung up fairly tight from the meet with Kevin, and I needed time to uncoil. It was only a little after ten, and I thought I’d rather not go to Brooklyn until there was a more realistic chance that my subtenant might be asleep. That left me two or three hours to kill, and I knew it would be better not to spend the time drinking, though naturally that was an early thought to cross my mind. No, the thing to do was try to visit someone, preferably someone who was innocent of any knowledge of or acquaintance with either Lauren or Kevin. There were several possibilities. I went to a phone booth across the street from the pizza stand and started dropping change. Two no answers, one machine, and then I had Ray, of Harvey and Ray, live and in person at the other end of the line. They were both home and reasonably willing to be dropped in on.
    Harvey and Ray’s loft was practically a carbon copy of Kevin’s, leaving out location and details of decoration. It has often occurred to me that all New York artists’ lofts may well have been designed by the same minimalist moron, though I suppose if that was the case somebody would have burned him at the stake by this time. Their place was down at the west end of Prince Street, an easy distance from