What! Her! Say, listen here, bub—well, all right, no offense taken, but she is not that kind. O. K. O. K. Let it ride. Sure I will have another beer, only do not make no more remarks like that, see. O. K. O. K.
Maybe I do not make myself clear. I mean she has gone in for double-jointed cigarette holders and red fingernails and them long-haired guys what paints a picture of somebody so as they have one eye here and one here and clockwork springs for the top of their head and maybe a spare tire for one hand and a fiddle for the other with a bunch of carrots sprouting out of it.
Anyway, that is what I am hearing and—here's bumps, brother. You know I set and watched a glass of beer bubble from the bottom one night and it bubbled for three hours and a half 'fore it got flat. That was when Ditsy—But I will get around to that quick enough. Now and again I still catches myself trying not to think about it. And it has been a long time. A long time.
What was I saying? Oh, yeah, Jimmie hitting the paint. He is all right because I am setting in a place in Cleveland—having just got off the train—and some fellow comes in and I does not pay no attention until I see he is walking like a banty rooster which is sea-sick. And I yells, "Jimmie!" And he looks up and focuses on me and I see it is true he is hitting the paint and, if his present condition is a fair example, he is hitting it with a capital H.
I am not one to stick my nose in other people's business. I am one who says other people's business is their own business and no business of mine, having found that a nose stuck in other people's business usually gets itself pinned up so as it does not look like a nose for quite a while after.
But this is different. First, it is Jimmie Winkie. Second, he is running a race the next day I have seen by the papers. Third, it will not put no shine on his shoes if somebody says, "Oh, look, is that not Wee Winkie and is he not skizzled?"
To make a long story short, I gets him out of there. I thinks about checking into a hotel, but there is those somebodies again, so there is not nothing to do but get a cab and take him home. The same which I does.
When I first sees Ditsy I also thinks it is true that she has turned into a red-hot momma. She has done something to her mouth so it looks like it has been swatted by a ripe plum, and she is wearing one of them "creations" that does not leave but very little to the imagination, and she is walking with two silver-headed canes, and her fingernails looks like they has been dipped in calves' liver while it is still in the calf.
She is quite a sight for sore eyes until you remembers it is Ditsy and, then your collar gets too tight and you say, "Hello, Ditsy," and she does not say nothing. She just looks at Jimmie until you thinks she does not know who it is and, then, she looks at me and her eyes is the color of a horse's flanks after a workout—dark and wet and velvety—and she says, "Bring him in, Jacks," and, some way, her voice sounds like it is bleeding. And, all at once, you know that underneath all this cover-up she has put on is the same old Ditsy. Worn finer, and kind of tired, but Ditsy.
She knows what to do, too. She does not put him to bed. She has me set him up in the bathroom with his head over the basin and she feeds him soapy water and as fast as one glass full comes up down goes another. And when he says he cannot do it no more, she wheedles him into doing it until his insides is as clean as a old maid's conscience, and his head is woozy but not boozy. Also, I am under the impression this is not the first time them two has underwent this here same procedure.