"Give me a nickel."
The clerk's hand fell on the coin and slid it off into the unknown
before I could move, what with holding up Doc.
"You've got your nerve," he said at me with a fine mist of dew. "Had a
quarter all along and yet you Martian me down to twenty cents." He saw
the look on my face. "I'll give you a _room_ for the two bits. That's
better'n a bed for twenty."
I knew I was going to need that nickel. _Desperately._ I reached across
the desk with my free hand and hauled the scrawny human up against the
register hard. I'm not as strong in my hands as Doc, but I managed.
"Give me a nickel," I said.
"What nickel?" His eyes were big, but they kept looking right at me.
"You don't have any nickel. You don't have any quarter, not if I say
so. Want I should call a cop and tell him you were flexing a muscle?"
I let go of him. He didn't scare me, but Doc was beginning to mumble
and that _did_ scare me. I had to get him alone.
"Where's the room?" I asked.
* * * * *
The room was six feet in all directions and the walls were five feet
high. The other foot was finished in chicken wire. There was a wino
singing on the left, a wino praying on the right, and the door didn't
have any lock on it. At last, Doc and I were alone.
I laid Doc out on the gray-brown cot and put his forearm over his face
to shield it some from the glare of the light bulb. I swept off all the
bedbugs in sight and stepped on them heavily.
Then I dropped down into the painted stool chair and let my burning
eyes rest on the obscene wall drawings just to focus them. I was so
dirty, I could feel the grime grinding together all over me. My shaggy
scalp still smarted from the alcohol I had stolen from a convertible's
gas tank to get rid of Doc's and my cooties. Lucky that I never needed
to shave and that my face was so dirty, no one would even notice that I
didn't need to.
The cramp hit me and I folded out of the chair onto the littered,
uncovered floor.
It stopped hurting, but I knew it would begin if I moved. I stared at a
jagged cut-out nude curled against a lump of dust and lint, giving it
an unreal distortion.
Doc began to mumble louder.