They had me in the counselor’s office in one of the back rooms of the second floor.

“Let me see how you look, Chinaski.” He looked at me.

“Ow! You look bad. I better take a pill.”

Sure enough, he opened a bottle and took one.

“All right, Mr. Chinaski, we’d like to know where you’ve been the last two days?”

“Mourning.”

“Mourning? Mourning about what?”

“Funeral. Old friend. One day to pack in the stiff. One day to mourn.”

“But you didn’t phone in, Mr. Chinaski.”

“Yeh.”

“And I want to tell you something, Chinaski, off the record.”

“All right.”

“When you don’t phone in, you know what you are saying?” “No.”

“Mr. Chinaski, you are saying, ‘Fuck the post office!’ ”

“I am?”

“And, Mr. Chinaski, you know what that means?”

“No, what does it mean?”

“That means, Mr. Chinaski, that the post office is going to fuck youl”

Then he leaned back and looked at me.

“Mr. Feathers,” I told him, “you can go to hell.”

“Don’t get fresh, Henry. I can make it tough on you.”

“Please address me by my full name, sir. I ask for a simple bit of respect from you.”

“You ask respect for me but ...”

“That’s right. We know where you park, Mr. Feathers.”

“What? Is that a threat?”

“The blacks love me here, Feathers. I have fooled them.”

“The blacks love you?”

“They give me water. I even fuck their women. Or try to.”

“All right. This is getting out of hand. Please report back to your assignment.”

He handed me my travel slip. He was worried, poor fellow. I hadn’t fooled the blacks. I hadn’t fooled anybody but Feathers. But you couldn’t blame him for worrying. One supervisor had been pushed down the stairway. Another slashed across the ass.

Another knifed in the belly as he was waiting in the crosswalk for the signal to change at 3 a.m. Right in front of the central post office. We never saw him again.
Feathers, soon after I spoke to him, bid out of the central office. I don’t know exactly where he went. But it was out of the central office.