Chapter 46

Big Sal dresses my wound while I tell her about my day. I have a yearning for my own apartment and Brian, mans best friend. I will have to make a trip down to the 5th precinct and search out Doil. The trousers to my suit are ripped and soaked in blood. I’ll get my tailor to bus over another pair. I use the phone in the Cat House. It is probably bugged but I’m only ordering a new pair of pants. Pinned to the notice board by the phone is an envelope with my name on it in the Madame’s handwriting. Not addressed to Fats but Joe Coolz. I take it down and open it carefully making sure I don’t tear it. Inside is a note reminding me that I have a gig on Italia, as Oscar Peterson, in two days time. This is puzzling, well you can see why. I pin the envelope back up. I will have to quiz the Madame about it, but carefully. I knock on her door and she lets me in.

‘Hi Fats, been away’

‘Took a trip to the Hampton’s, Montauk actually. The Van de Bilts place.

‘Didja bump into Tom Brown, he is a regular here when the Van de Bilts slumming it.’

‘Yeh we played some.’

‘What’s the beef? You limping?’

‘Just a graze.’ She offers me a cigar and lights it with a gold table lighter in the shape of a penis.

‘I just made a call to my tailor for some new pants.’ I paused I think she knew what was coming.

‘There’s an envelope for a Joe Coolz’

‘Must be a John, something he don’t want his wife to know. We act like a second office for some.’

‘Been there long?’

‘Why, …..a friend of yours?’

‘Piano player I know from the West Coast. With a name like Joe Coolz it’s not easy to forget’.

‘A classy blond dropped it over yesterday, maybe she wants him for herself.’

‘None of my business really, I just remember the name.’

‘Listen Fats, so long as the girls are clean and the Johns happy I don’t take much interest. Open the envelope if you want, if he is a friend of yours he won’t mind. Will he?         

                                          ****************

If the IGBI are reminding me of a gig then my wrist controller must be activated. Big Sal is in the ensuite bathing. I put the controller onto my wrist and leave 500c’s on the bed, then press the return.

A nano second of ecstasy and I am back on the black spot. Georgia is behind the desk.

‘I thought we’d lost you, no gig lasts 3 weeks.’

‘Yeh I’ll be glad to get my own body back. How long is your shift, I need some relaxed company?’

‘Just started man, and I have a date later.’

I am not really disappointed as I am banjaxed. I go to prosthetics take off Fats and re-acquaint myself with myself in the present, Mars 40037.