The Rip-Off Read Free

stained glass, bright with color.
    I stood looking off into that previously mentioned not-too-distant distance. It was coming closer; it had come quite a bit closer since yesterday, it seemed to me. And why not, anyway, as rapidly as those trucks were dumping their burden?
    At present, I was merely- merely!- in the environs of a garbage dump. But soon it would be right up to my back door. Soon, I would be right in the middle of the stinking, rat-infested horror.
    And maybe that was as it should be, hmm? What better place for the unwanted, unneeded and worthless?
    Jesus! I closed my eyes, shivering.
    I went back through the house, and up to my bedroom. I glanced at myself in a floor-length mirror, and I doubt that I looked as bad as my warped and splotched reflection. But still I cursed and groaned out loud.
    I flung off my clothes, and showered vigorously. I shaved again, doing it right instead of half-assed. And then I began rummaging through my closets, digging far back in them and uncovering items that I had forgotten.
    An hour later, after some work with Mrs. Olmstead's steam iron, some shoe polish and a buffing brush, I again looked at myself. And warped as it was, the mirror told me my efforts were well-spent indeed!
    The handmade shoes were eternally new, ever-magnificent despite their chronological age. The cambric shirt from Sulka, and the watered-silk Countess Mara tie, were new-long-ago Christmas presents which I had only glanced at, and returned to their gift box. And a decade had been wonderfully kind to the Bond Street suit, swinging full circle through fads and freakishness, and bringing it back in style again.
    I frowned, studying my hair.
    The shagginess was not too bad, not unacceptable, but a trim was certainly in order. The gray temples, and the gray streak down the center were also okay, a distinguished contrast for the jet blackness. However, that yellowish tinge which gray hair shittily acquires, was not all right. I needed to see a truly good hair man, a stylist, not the barber-college cruds that I customarily went to.
    I examined my wallet-twelve dollars plus the fifty Jason had given me. So I could properly finish the job I had started, hair and all. And the wonders it would do for my frazzled morale to look decent again, the way Britton Rainstar had to look… having so little else but looks.
    But if I did that, if I didn't make at least a token payment to Amicable Finance-!
    The phone rang. It had not been disconnected, as Jason bad assumed. Calling me at other numbers was simply part of the "treatment."
    I picked up the phone, and identified myself.
    A cheery man's voice said that he was Mr. Bradley, Amicable comptroller. "You have quite a large balance with us, Mr. Rainstar. I assume you'll be dropping in today to settle up?"
    I started to say that I was sorry, that I simply couldn't pay the entire amount, as much as I desired to. " But I'll pay something; that's a promise, Mr. Bradley. And I'll have the rest within a week-I swear I will! J-just don't do anything. D-don't hurt me. Please, Mr. Bradley ."
    "Yes, Mr. Rainstar? What time can I expect you in today?"
    "You can't," I said.
    "How's that?" His voice crackled like a whip.
    "Not today or any other day. You took my car. I repaid your loan in full, and you still took my car. Now-"
    "Late charges, Rainstar. Interest penalties. Repossession costs. Nothing more than your contract called for."
    I told him he could go fuck what the contract called for. He could blow it out his ass. "And if you bastards pull any more crap on me, any more of this calling me to the phone in the middle of the night…"
    "Call you to the phone?" He was laughing at me . "Fake emergency calls? What makes you think we were responsible?"
    I told him why I thought it; why I knew it. Because only Amicable Finance was lousy enough to pull such tricks. Others might screw their own mothers with syphilitic cocks, or pimp their sisters at a nickel a throw. But they weren't up to