Free Swag by Elmore Leonard

buy one, for Christ sake. Take it out of the bank thing.”
    â€œHave a nice time,” Stick said.
    Frank was shaking his head, a little sadly, patiently. “Sometimes, you know what? You sound like a broad. A wife. Poor fucking martyr’s got to sit home while the guy’s out having a good time.”
    â€œI’ll wait up for you,” Stick said. “Case you come in, you fall and hit your head on the toilet when you’re throwing up.”
    â€œHow long you been saving that?”
    â€œIt just came to me, you throw up a lot.”
    â€œYou’re quite a conversationalist,” Frank said. “I’d like to stay and chat, but I’m running a little late.” He went out.
    There was a junior executive group at the Villa, a few guys with friends who were always coming over. Sometimes in the evening, after they’d changed from their business outfits to Levi’s and Adidas, they’d sit on the patio and drink beer. If Stick was out on the balcony he’d listen to them, see if he could learn anything.
    Usually it was about how stoned one of them got the night before. Or the best source of grass in Ann Arbor. Or why this one guy had switched from a Wilson Jack Kramer to a Bancroft Competition. Or how a friend of one of them had brought back eight cases of Coors from Vail. Then he wouldn’t hear anything for a minute or so—one of them talking low—then loud laughter. The laughter would get louder as they went through the six-packs, and the junior executives would say shit a lot more. That was about all Stick learned.
    This evening he didn’t learn anything. They had two beers and decided to go to the show. Stick wondered what Mona was doing. Frank was gone. It’d be a good time if he was going to do it. He liked her looks and could picture her clearly in his mind, but he couldn’t see her making all those sounds.
    He wondered how much she charged.
    He went out past the Formica table at the end of the living room to the kitchen and got a can of Busch Bavarian, came back in, sat down on one of the canvas chairs, and stared at an orange-and-yellow shape on the wall, a mess of colors, like somebody had spilled a dozen eggs and framed them.
    He put the beer on the glass coffee table, went over and got Donna Fargo going on the hi-fi. He listened to her tell how she was the luckiest girl in the U.S.A., how she would wake up and say, “Mornin’ Lord, howdy sun,” and studied himself in the polished aluminum mirror on the wall. He looked dark and gaunt, a little mean-looking with his serious expression. Howdy there. I’m your next-door neighbor. I was wondering—
    Going out the door and along the second-floor walk, he was still wondering.
    I was wondering, if you weren’t busy—
    I was wondering, if you were free—had some free time, I mean.
    He said to himself, Shit, let her do it. She knows what you want.
    He knocked on her door and waited and knocked a couple more times. Still nothing, not a sound from inside the apartment. Stick went back to his own place, picked up the can of Busch, and walked out on the balcony. It was still quiet, with a dull evening sky clouding over. A lifeless expanse of sky, boring.
    But there was somebody down there now. In the swimming pool. A girl doing a sidestroke, trying to keep her head up and barely moving. She was actually in the water, and Stick couldn’t recall any of the career ladies ever actually swimming before. He thought she had on a reddish bathing cap, then realized it was her hair—the redheaded one with the frizzy hair the guy in the silver Mark IV came to visit a couple of times a week. That one.
    Arlene saw him standing there with her purple beach towel as she came out of the pool in her lavender bikini, her beads, and her seven rings. She said, “Hi,” and laughed.
    Stick handed her the towel, asked her how she was doing, and learned, Just fine.
    He said,