"—strictly on Presbyterianism."
I thought that over. "Maybe. They'll need the dough. And it's a favorite old anodyne of mine—rolling up the sleeves."
Dave poured out a second glass of iced tea and gulped it. He nodded his head toward my bedroom. "When he wakes up, tell him to come down to my office. Tell him we're working for him. We'll do what we can think of. I'll keep him stooging around—and sober, if possible—and see you later."
"Going?"
He came across the room and put an arm around my shoulder. "You said you wanted to work. I'll be back."
"Okay."
2
I remember, one day on the way to California, when the Chief stopped at Needles. It was summertime and the thermometer on the station wall in the shade said 125 degrees. I was standing around, dizzy, when I saw a guy pacing up and down the platform as if he enjoyed it. I ventured out in the sunshine to see if he'd lost his mind and he turned around—a dark-skinned character. Royalty, it proved later, from Hyderabad. He liked it.
My apartment, that morning, was something like the Needles station on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. No baking sand, red-hot rocks, or mountains pitching on the miraged distance, of course. Needles was dry, too, and Manhattan was close to saturate.
I worked along—not minding much.