Free Crying Wolf by Peter Abrahams

thing hanging under his lower lip: he’d turned into a Portagee, which was what he was, of course.
    â€œWhole different scene out there, Ronnie.”
    â€œRun into any movie stars?”
    â€œMatter fact, yeah.”
    â€œLike who?”
    Freedy named him. “Kind of an asshole.”
    â€œKind of an asshole? You’re joking.”
    â€œThese people are different in real life, Ronnie.”
    â€œYou tryin’ to tell me you know him personally?”
    Freedy nodded. “Customer of mine.”
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œTold you already.”
    â€œThat swimming-pool thing?”
    â€œBusiness. Not thing. Business. I had a pool business. A-1 Pool Design, Engineering, and Maintenance. Still do, once the lawyers get through with all their bullshit. Why I’m taking this little . . . what’s the word?”
    â€œSabbatical?”
    â€œYeah, sabbatical.” They knew words like that, growing up in a college town.
    There was a silence, except for the cartoons on the Panasonic, and water dripping somewhere nearby. On the TV a shark went snapping after some little critter; recalling to Freedy’s mind that Mexican cartoon of the squid arm snaking out from the filter outlet. And now he remembered where he’d seen the cartoon—in a bar in Mexico featuring one of those live sex shows. An Indian guy and two bleached blondes. A dark place, except for the TV behind the bar and the little stage with blue spotlights shining on tits, ass, and the Indian’s enormous dick. Squid arm and Indian dick: basic psychology, some kind of symbol, like the Eiffel Tower, precise word for the symbol escaping him at the moment; and he’d never think of it here, what with Ronnie stroking that stupid hairy thing under his lower lip and asking dumb questions.
    â€œHuh?” said Freedy.
    â€œA-1,” said Ronnie. “The name of this so-called business.”
    â€œWhat about it?”
    â€œSounds like one of those outfits that try to get their name first in the yellow pages.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œNot what you’d call, you know, creative.”
    â€œCreative?” said Freedy. “You turned into some kind of fag, or what?” He whipped out his wallet, flashed his business card at Ronnie
. A-1 Pool Design, Engineering, and Maintenance, Friedrich Knight, Representative
. Maybe Ronnie wouldn’t catch that
representative
bit. That was Freedy’s first thought. His second thought was: maybe the whole A-1 trip should have been kept out of the conversation. By that time, Ronnie had the card in his hand.
    â€œSays here
representative,
” said Ronnie. “That’s like rep, right?”
    Freedy snatched the card back; not snatched, more like took back swiftly. “Which was before the buyout. The new cards haven’t been delivered. They’re so fuckin’ useless you wouldn’t believe it.”
    Ronnie blinked. “Who?”
    Freedy slipped the card in his pocket. “Printers, for Christ sake. You not listenin’? And now we’re in this Chapter Eleven shit, and everything’s on hold.”
    â€œChapter Eleven?”
    â€œTechnicality, Ronnie. Ties things up for a while.”
    â€œWhat things?”
    Freedy sighed. “Like in football.”
    â€œFootball?”
    â€œOffsetting penalties.”
    â€œHolding and pass interference?”
    â€œThat kind of thing.”
    â€œI still think of the fucking Hoosac game,” Ronnie said. “Remember that pussy?”
    â€œWho fumbled on the one?”
    â€œHe was on the goal line, Freedy. I was right there.”
    â€œFaculty kid,” said Freedy. The college professors’ kids usually went away to boarding school, but this one hadn’t.
    â€œCost us the Hoosac game,” Ronnie said. “Thanksgiving, what year was that?”
    A long time ago, four, five years, Freedy couldn’t remember.
    â€œYou ever think of that game,