Kerrigan shook his head. “Just came out to get some air.”
“What air?” Mooney grumbled. “Thermometer says ninety-four. We might as well be in a blast furnace.”
“There’s a breeze coming from the river,” Kerrigan said.
“I’m glad you feel it,” Mooney said. “For supper I had a plate of ice. Just plain ice.”
“That only makes it worse,” Kerrigan said. “Try a lukewarm bath.”
“I’ll hafta try something,” Mooney said. “I can’t stand this goddamn weather.” He was a tall, solidly built man with sloping shoulders and a thick neck. His hair was carrot-colored and he had a lot of it and always kept it combed neatly, parted in the middle and slicked down. His skin was very pale, almost like the skin of an infant. Although he was thirty-six, there were no lines on his face, and his gray-green eyes were clear and bright, so that the only sign of his years was in his voice. He looked more or less like an overgrown boy. Actually he was a widely-traveled man who’d studied painting in Italy on a fellowship and had been hailed as an important discovery in the art circles of Europe. He’d come back to America to find that his water colors were acclaimed by the critics but ignored by the patrons. So he’d changed his style in an effort to make sales, and the critics roasted him and then forgot about him. Then everybody forgot about him. He returned to Vernon Street and started painting signs in order to eat. Sometimes when he was drunk he’d talk about his art career, and if he was terribly drunk he’d shout that he was planning another exhibition in the near future. But no matter how drunk he was, he never said nasty things about the critics and the collectors. He never said anything about them one way or another. His primary grudge was against the weather. He was always complaining about the weather.
Nick was laughing. “You shoulda seen him eating the ice. He has a big block of ice on a plate and he’s biting it like it’s meat or something. He musta et up about ten pounds of ice.”
“That’s bad for you,” Kerrigan told Mooney. “You’ll ruin your stomach, doing that.”
“My stomach can take anything,” Mooney said. “Anything at all. If I can chew it, I can eat it. Last week in Dugan’s I won three dollars on a bet.”
“Doing what?” Kerrigan asked.