"Ok, ok." I say.

"You know Mary Jane, Sparky's secretary?"

"yeah," I say, "white hair, cheerful; church lady. She handles all of Sparky's cash, does his books. Sweetest lady you want to know. I don't understand why she works for that bastard."

"I guess he pays her enough," he says, brushing his black hair back. "So I'm looking for this map--"

"I know about the map." I say.

"Will you just shut up and listen?" he says, "you're making it hard to tell this." He says the word 'hard' like 'hod', the Captain is from the City.

I sip my coke. "go ahead." The waitress rustles by and the Captain is distracted for a minute. I wait.

"So I decided to check out the pawn shops, see if maybe I can find the map there. I've looked in all the used bookstores, the antique stores, the frame shops, and I think, maybe it's in one of the pawn shops. So I check the yellow pages and write down where they are, I make a little map, and this afternoon I went around, checking them out. One after the other, no luck, nothing."

"The map doesn't ex--"

"Shut your face," he says, his black eyes glittering, "I'll find it, you'll see." He takes a long pull at his glass. I wait.

"So I finished my list and came up empty, no map, nothing. But I remembered there was one more pawn shop over in Titus, I didn't put it on my list, but by the time I was done it wasn't that far away, and I called Mary Jane, you know she lives in Titus, and I asked her if she knew where the pawn shop was. She said yeah, it's on 35, on the right, just before the intersection with 34. I was on 35, so I head over there and there's a video store and then the intersection." He took another drink from his glass and smiled. "I circled back and called her again, "Mary Jane, I don't see it. 'Do you see the coffee shop?' she asks me. 'Yeah,' I say, 'I'm passing it now.' She says, 'there's a spanish grocery, then an abandoned gas station, right?' 'yep, I see them.' 'It's in the next building,' she says. 'right there.'" Now the next building is the video store. So I pull in and park in the drive-thru -- it used to be a bank -- and I go in."

The Captain looks at me. I wait.

"It's one big room with porno videos on the walls all around, some pink toys, all the videos have these girls with great big eyes, you know the cheap kind of porn?"

I sip my drink, nodding. I know that kind of porn. Heard about it somewhere.

"There are two guys behind the counter, black t-shirts, pierced lips, greasy hair, you know the kind of guy?"

I nod again. I know the kind of guy... heard about 'em somewhere at least.

"So I walk over to the counter and the one guy says to me, 'Can I help you?' and he's got this funny little smile on his face... I say, 'yeah, I'm looking for the pawn shop, somebody told me there was a pawn shop here.' His face gets a little curlier, and he says, 'yeah, man. You're standing in it.' I look around and I still don't get it. I say, 'a PAWN shop, like where they have used guitars and computers and shit like that.' I'm thinking maybe it's upstairs."

"He says, 'no, man, we got nothing like that here.' I look at him and he looks at me. We're both smiling, different kinds of smiles. He says, 'I thought you were screwing with me man.'"

"So what'd you do?" I ask him. The Captain grins.

"First I called Mary Jane." he says, "she didn't answer, so I left her a message. 'I said *pawn* shop, Mary Jane, p-a-W-n."

"And then?"

"I bought a couple dvd's," he says, "why waste a trip?" He finished his drink and looked at me. "That Mary Jane, she didn't skip a beat."