Usually, when the late shift ended, I would go to a bar and
then finish the evening with breakfast at a diner, and then go to bed
just as the world was waking up to start its day. Always very pleased
with a good day's work. And always very drunk.
	The waitress took great care in arranging the three pieces of
silverware in just such a way on the napkin before putting them on the
table. The act of putting them down always jostled them around so that
I never knew just how it was that she had wanted them.
	"Are you FBI?" she asked.
	I'd been coming here every night for two weeks, and this puffy
creature in pink had waited on me each time. I suppose that a guy in a
crewcut wearing sunglasses and a suit in suburban D.C. suggests
espionage more than it does late-night jazz disk jockey, but I always
wore grey- light colors- and G-men wear black. I lit a cigarette.
	"Yes," I replied. "Give me the usual."

	The waitress left, and a tight red dress approached and sat
down. I was interested in only one thing. I'd spent enough time in the
bar that she looked like Venus. The bartender kept chewing me out for
gulping sipping scotch.
	"Are you really FBI?"
	"Navy."
	"You told her you're FBI."
	I raised my sunglasses and stared at her, dead-pan, for a
second and then lowered them again.
	"What do you do?"
	"I'm in radio transmission."
	"What does that mean, exactly?"
	"It doesn't mean anything, EXACTLY. Nothing does."
	She started to look disappointed, and so I hurried to mend the
rift.
	"Basically, I spend most of my time creating and broadcasting
special types of jazz which the government uses to control people's
minds. They also use me in a lot of rough situations where someone
else might get hurt. A lot of overseas stuff." I knew J. Edgar Hoover
would have me shot if he knew I was telling her this. I also knew that
J. Edgar Hoover overheard a lot of people who didn't know they were
being overheard. Looking back on it, this was where I was flirting
more with risk and excitement than with the woman sitting across from
me, and so the seduction was doomed at this point. The irony was that
it was the first completely true, non-misleading thing I'd said to
ANYBODY in almost six months, and it was also the first utterance of
mine in that period that hadn't been accepted as the Gospel truth.
	"Well, a woman's interested in a man's work, and now you know
all about mine."
	"So I should tell you what a man wants to know about a woman?"
she asked, pleased with her cleverness. Even though the seduction was
doomed, still I had her dancing from the strings tied to my fingers.
	"Yeah. Tell me your vital stats," I said, enjoying my
cigarette. Just as she was starting to speak, I added "One at a time,
so I can enjoy them." She tried to get into this. You can make
anybody do anything if you create the aura that the behavior in
question was acceptable. That was what my work was all about.
	"OK- 34."
	"Wait- which is that?"
	"It's my bust. The bust always comes first. It's the bust,
then the waist, then the butt."
	"Oh. I thought maybe since you were only giving them one at a
time you might give them out of order." Doomed.
	"Which did you think 34 was, my waist?"
	"No, your butt." Doomed. Doomed, doomed, doomed, doomed.
	"You tell me what you wanted to hear."
	"OK." I looked pensive. "How about 41-27-31?"
	"Nobody has a body like that."
	I stared.
	"I mean, you could have 41 inch boobs, and you could have a 27
inch waist and a 31 inch butt, but not on the same body. 41 inches is
a huge bust..." So was this conversation, I thought. "41 inches is a
huge bust," she continued, "and 31 is a teeny-weeny butt. Nobody's
built like that."
	"Jayne Mansfield."
	"Jayne Mansfield's dead."

	I don't remember anything after that. The scotch had really set
in, and everything had become warped, like a Dali painting. I woke up
in my bedroom, face down and fully clothed. Birds were chirping. At
first, I thought it was my canary, but I remembered I don't have a
canary. The chirping was from outside. I'd always wanted a canary, but
I knew that in my line of work the day might come when they make a hit
on me in my apartment. And I didn't want to walk in, and see my canary
dead, and from that know that I was about to get whacked.
	I felt awful. There was a dry, stifling heat. It was like I
was in a coffin. I grabbed a newspaper off of the floor so I would
have something to concentrate on besides my discomfort as I staggered
to the toilet. I looked at the newspaper, but not a single word jumped
out at me. Nothing was happening at my other end, either. I took a
metal box out of the medicine cabinet, took out a small, waxy cone and
inserted it into my anus. "Into my anus"? "Past my anus?" I pondered
the correct usage.
	Just as I was settling back down, the phone rang. With my
pants around my ankles, I crab-walked into the outer room, and grabbed
the phone during the eighth ring.
	"Hello?"
	No salutation from the other end: "You idiot! You're fired."
It was J. Edgar Hoover. He was bluffing. I hung up and resumed my
position, like one of worship, in the bathroom. A minute later, all
the sins of the world ran out of me. I stared at the newspaper. The
guilt of being five days behind on my newspapers shamed me to
find an article I could focus on and read it. I finally found one.
	It said Jayne Mansfield was dead.