"Ditsy has always wanted a grand piano," he says, "since she was not bigger'n a boot-jack." And he says, "I will get her the best one money can buy."
It is obvious that he tightened up more than I think because there is not enough space in that two-room flat in Cleveland to hold both Ditsy and a grand piano at the same time.
"That will be dandy," I says, "but I am afraid there will not be no grand piano in it. Them things cost folding money."
"Folding money," he repeats and the words sounds like a three-inch sirloin the way he says them—thick and red and juicy. "You know what I am going to have," he says, "I am going to have a pair of handmade boots—them that laces at the ankle—and I am going to have a suit with buttonholes under the buttons on the sleeves. Not just thread sewed to look like buttonholes—real buttonholes I am going to have under the buttons and a yellow chamois bag."
"A yellow chamois bag under the buttons," I says and, recalling to mind a chap named Joe Hankins who fought a bunch of Comanches all one night in a psycopathic ward at a hospital in Louisville, I continues to smile pleasantly while I eases my chair back.
"Yeah," Jimmie says, "lined with flannel so as the bridle will not get scratched up none."
"Sure," I agrees, "flannel."
"Saratoga," says Jimmie, "Havre de Grace, Narragansett, Hialeah, Aqueduct."
"Hawthorne, Churchill Downs, Empire City, Belmont Park, Thistledown," I chimes in nodding like a Chinese laundryman who has lost your wash. I holds my breath and gets to my feet praying that I will be able to ease him out quiet.
"Through?" Jimmie says, cool as a cucumber. "What say we see if we can get a game of pool on the cuff?"