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Show Acting Alone pa g e 115 a flannel and linen straitjacket. "Can I say sumpun? Off the record?" asked Spikey. He looked shyly down at his tiny feet, which barely reached the rug from the height of the footstool. "Of course, Spikey," said Sam, secretly reaching under his pillow and switching on the Sony micro-cassette recorder. He'd stowed the contrivance there precisely for such an eventuality as this. He knew that if Spikey ever did open up it would be after dark when the women were in bed, when just the two men could talk, man-to-man. Isn't that just how it always was in those old Henry Aldritch movies which Shanny had been watching ceaselessly on daytime TV ever since they'd arrived in Kiev? While Sam had given up on the book itself, one never knew when a tape recording of someone saying something surpassingly indiscreet about himself might come in handy. "Shoot," said Sam, invitingly. He tried to bring the Sony up close to the surface of the bedding so the sound of Spikey's thin nasal voice would come through. Sam was very careful not to allow the little red pilot light to shine through the gloom and catch Sgt. Spikey's eye; another blow to the nose like the last one could be fatal. What follows is a complete and uncut, gapless transcript of the tape (with a few stage directions tossed in here and there for clarity's sake, plus an occasional surmise as to what may or may not have been going on in Spikey's "mind"): "I never told nobody this. It's the kind of secret thang that you can only tell to another man, and I never had no brother, and I never could |