Free Web of the City by Harlan Ellison Page B

let any gang of juvies louse her up.
    He dressed hurriedly.
    Whoever had intimidated Greaseball Bolley into letting the Cougars turn his back rooms into a club, had done a fine job. For the fat man was terrified of the hard-eyed kids who walked through his bowling alley, into the rear. He studied each one carefully, getting to know them by sight and name, against the day they decided to wreck the joint and put him down. He was more than fat; he was gigantic in that seldom-seen fantastic way that brings to mind thick dough puddings and overstuffed Morris chairs. One of the men who bowled regularly in League, Wednesday nights, who was also an avid reader of science fiction, compared Greaseball to a spaceman who had been infected with a spore that had bloated him into moon-proportions. It was a striking analogy, for Bolley’s body was not only hasty-pudding squishy, and waggled flappingly as he stumped forward, but the skin was an unhealthy yellow, pimpled and puckered and strewn with moles, pustules, explosions of flesh, that made him look like some weird diseased fruit, overripe and rotting within.
    He was well-liked by everyone in the neighborhood.
    But someone in the Cougars, years before Rusty had become the Prez, had decided the gang needed a clubhouse, and had decided with equal ease that the back rooms of the Paradise Bowling Alley were the site. So Greaseball Bolley had become unhappy host to the Cougars and their girls’ auxiliary. The place resounded to the stomping feet and high-flung wails of rock’n’roll, and the occasional moan of an apple who had been put down for a while.
    Greaseball Bolley was unhappy about the situation, but he maintained a philosophical neutrality, for his size cut away any ideas the gang might have had about causing him trouble. He watched them and they watched him and they hung suspended in a state of alert tolerance. Enough that Bolley allowed them to use the place, as they allowed him to stay in business. It was not at all the same sort of arrangement the gang had with TomTom, who was merely terrorized. This was a grudging acceptance of strength, and a decision to permanently put off hostilities, for the good of the majority.
    Greaseball was glad the spanging of pins cut off most of the Cougars’ noise.
    But tonight, they were doing it up sky-blue. More than usual had tramped past the showcase with its FOR SALE sign, model pins, balls, carrying cases, shoes and other paraphernalia inside. They had all given him the eye of recognition, the two-fingered greeting and gone quietly back to the club rooms.
    Greaseball never went back there. They had their own locks on the doors and they kept their house. He knew about the several bedrooms, about the girls and boys who stayed overnight, about the slashings and the narcotics, but his fear of gang reprisal was greater than that of the police, so he kept his mouth shut and the Cougars made sure they did nothing overt to attract the attention of The Men. It had been that way for a long time now and the days seemed endlessly plodding in danger to Greaseball. But he did nothing to stop them. Far back, before the Cougars, there had been some trouble with a waitress, and a broken bottle, and a long term inside gray walls. So Greaseball Bolley did nothing, but watch and let them sink into his mind’s eye. And if someday the balance shifted he would take as many with him as he could. But till then…
    He was well-liked by everyone in the neighborhood.
    Rusty passed Greaseball Bolley with all the cool aplomb of the days when he had been Prez. He kept his eyes front and his step assured as he walked past the gigantic heap of doughy flesh. But for the first time since he had met the fat man, on taking over the Cougars, Greaseball spoke to Rusty.
    “ ’Ey. You, Santori. C’mere.”
    Rusty stopped and pivoted slowly. His eyes met those of the fat man and for a minute he had trouble deciding what color they were; so deeply buried in caverns of oozing