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“That there’s a tasty bit of trouble,” said the sailor. “Yep,” I said, snapping my bar towel and draping it over my arm as fancy as you please. “You know what they say, though, Cap’n, full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes.”
“Hi, Sammy,” she said. “I’m Stilton.” “Pardon? Mrs. Stilton?” “First name Stilton. Like the cheese.” “Like what cheese?” “Stilton? You’ve never heard of it? It’s an English cheese.” “Okay,” I said, relatively sure this daffy broad was making up cheeses.
as Mark Twain had put it, “Summer in Frisco makes a guy want to snatch a flounder up by the lapels and slap the damp off of him.” (One of Twain’s lesser-known quotes.)
Eddie pulled the door open, releasing a rush of yellow light, steam, tobacco smoke, and a cloud of vapor that Sammy would identify later as the odor of dusty old guy. He didn’t know how he knew that, but that’s what it put him in mind of.
Odor scent smell
“He couldn’t even say ‘squirrel.’ That’s how they spotted spies in the war, if they can’t say ‘squirrel,’ you blast ’em.” “That’s Germans that can’t say ‘squirrel.’”
If you’re planning a caper, that’s the flatfoot you want flapping after you. That mug couldn’t catch a cough in a tire fire.
he smiled like a dog at a barbecue for the blind.
“Pair of cluckberries, staring at ya!” Stilton called. “Burn some whisky and smear it with cow paste!” She slapped the ticket into the window, stabbed her pencil into her hair, and left it there. Phil, the fry cook, a rangy, scruffy mug who looked like he’d flunked out of sad clown school, slid the ticket over and peeked at it like it was his hole card in blackjack, frowned, and turned back to his grill. “Really?” asked the guy at the counter; forties, dark hair, and going round around the middle, wearing a suit that was too heavy for summer, even in San Francisco. “Is that what I ordered?”
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They were locals, and knew what the author Jack London had said about Ocean Beach in 1902: “Holy fuck, you couldn’t get a match lit here to save your life.”
“You know, for a slim broad, you eat like a champ.” “Yeah, thanks,” she said. “Been eating since I was a kid. You know, practice.”
“What about the scrotum guys?” “Who are the scrotum guys?” “The old guys at the noodle joint. The ones who look like they are made out of scrotum skin.” “That’s disrespectful, Sammy. Those are my venerated elders.”
