He couldn’t make a lot of sense out of the chatter. He heard Opium Jade rendering bits of Verlaine, though she was now across the street, working, and he understood no French. He could hear Bdeniowitz berating somebody for a lousy job, no—wait—it was Bdeniowitz berating Windrow for doing a lousy job of being alive, snatches of a lecture delivered and received in the early seventies, when Windrow had still been a cop. He chuckled. He could still taste the humiliation of that night. The strains of a tune passed through his mind. He hummed to himself inaccurately. C’est la vie, c’est la vie. Aha. That laugh. Sal had laughed like that as she had removed her fist full of quarters from his stomach, in preparation for the blow that had rendered him unconscious. Had some quirk of her conscience chided her for decking this total stranger, and she’d laughed it off? Just as Windrow had guiltily laughed off Bdeniowitz’ derision, years before? Naw, he thought to himself.
