The Fat Man in History and Other Stories Read Free Page B

telling a very long and involved story about a prostitute he picked up in his cab and who paid him double to let her conduct her business in the back seat. She made him turn his mirror back to front. No one cares if the story is true or not.
    Milligan says, yep.
    Milligan wears his clothes like corsets, always too tight. He says it is good for his blood, the tightness. But his flesh erupts in strange bulges from his thighs and stomach and arms. He looks trussed up, a grinning turkey ready for the oven.
    Milligan always has a story. His life is a continual charade, a collection of prostitutes and criminals, “characters,” beautiful women, eccentric old ladies, homosexuals, and two-headed freaks. Also he knows many jokes. Finch and May sit on the velvet cushions in Milligan’s room and listen to the stories, but it is bad for May who becomes depressed. The evenings invariably end with May in a fury saying, Jesus, I want a fuck, I want a fuck so badly it hurts. But Milligan just keeps laughing, somehow never realizing how badly it affects May.
    May, Finch, Milligan, and the-man-who-won’t-give-his-name lounge around the kitchen drinking Glino’s homemade beer. Finch has suggested that they wash the dirty milk bottles before Florence Nightingale arrives and everyone has agreed that it is a good idea. However they have all remained seated, drinking Glino’s homemade beer. No one likes the beer, but of all the things that are hard to steal alcohol is the hardest. Even Fantoni cannot arrange it. Once he managed to get hold of a nine-gallon keg of beer but it sat in the back yard for a year before Glino got hold of a gas cylinder and the gear for pumping it out. They were drunk for one and a half days on that lot, and were nearly arrested en masse when they went out to piss on the commemorative plaque outside the offices of the Fifty-fourth District.
    No one says much. They sip Glino’s beer from jam jars and look around the room as if considering ways to tidy it, removing the milk bottles, doing something about the rubbish bin—a cardboard box which was full a week ago and from which eggshells, tins, and bread-crusts cascade on to the floor. Every now and then May reads something from an old newspaper, laughing very loudly. When May laughs, Finch smiles. He is happy to see May laughing because when he is not laughing he is very sad and liable to break things and do himself an injury. May’s forehead is still scarred from the occasion when he battered it against the front door for three hours. There is still blood on the paintwork.
    May wears an overcoat all the time, even tonight in this heat. His form is amorphous. He has a double chin and a drooping face that hangs downwards from his nose. He is balding and worries about losing hair. He sleeps for most of the day to escape his depressions and spends the nights walking around the house, drinking endless glasses of water, playing his record, and groaning to himself as he tries to sleep.
    May is the only one who was married before the revolution. He came to this town when he was fired from his job as a refrigerator salesman, and his wife was to join him later. Now he can’t find her. She has sold their house and he is continually writing letters to her, care of anyone he can think of who might know her whereabouts.
    May is also in love with Florence Nightingale, and in this respect he is no different from the other five, even Fantoni who claims to find her skinny and undernourished.
    Florence Nightingale is their friend, their confidante, their rentcollector, their mascot. She works for the revolution but is against it. She will be here soon. Everybody is waiting for her. They talk about what she will wear.
    Milligan, staring intently at his large Omega watch, says, peep, peep, peep, on the third stroke …
    The front door bell rings. It is Florence Nightingale.
    The-man-who-won’t-give-his-name springs up. He says, I’ll get it, I’ll get it. He looks very serious but