Max Collins - Quarry

I concentrated on my drinking and several minutes went by before I realized he’d been talking quite a while, talking about God knows what. He was saying, “… bummed around a long time. My folks were dead and buried before I ever got back home. I was bumming before it was popular. I hitchhiked when it was a way of life, not a damn fad. You know what I’m saying?”

“Sure.”

“No you don’t. You don’t know what I’m saying. You don’t know why I show movies to those guys either.”

“Sure I do.”

“No. You don’t know why I asked you for a drink.”

“Yeah I do.”

“What then?”

“You don’t want to lose your job. You want to make sure I’m okay.”

“You’re okay, I know you’re okay. That’s maybe part of it, I guess, making sure you’re okay, but you still don’t know, do you?”

“Sure I do.”

“You’re a salesman, you say?”

“Yeah.”

“How long?”

“Five years.”

“You’re young yet. You thirty?”

“No.”

“You’re young yet. Get another job.”

“What?”

“Get off the road.”

“What?”

“Find somebody. Find some woman. Or somebody.”

“Sure.”

“I mean it. If you don’t, you know what happens?”

“No.”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“Tell me.”

“You wake up old.”

“Is that right?”

“That’s right. And you find yourself old and alone and in a room and you die that way.”

I looked at him. For a moment he was Albert Leroy. Sitting on that bed and wearing a gray sweater with diamond shapes on it. For an icy instant he was my mark.

I blinked.

Hard.

And I looked again and he was a young Gabby Hayes. Only he didn’t seem so young anymore, and I didn’t feel so drunk anymore.

I thanked him for the whiskey and left the room.

So I went to bed depressed and woke up with a sour film in my mouth and a sour mood in my mind and I climbed out of bed and took the shower I never got around to the night before and went down for a long, cold swim.

I had to see Boyd today. Had to. Today was Wednesday — and Thursday was the day.

The pool was long and narrow. The water was green to look at and cool to swim in. Cool was good. I hate it when the water’s overheated, it puts me off-it’s closer to soaking in a big hot bath than swimming in a pool.

For a long time I swam. Somewhere between one hour and two. A good half hour of that was spent floating on my back and staring at the ceiling and thinking. It wasn’t good to think. Not on a job, not when your mind should be uncluttered. But if thinking couldn’t be helped, best to do so in a relaxed way like this.

I loved the water. Its coolness, its gentle, lazy movement. The water made me think of Wisconsin, even though this water was full of chlorine and in Wisconsin the water was clear and fresh. I thought of Wisconsin and the lake and the nice moments my life had its share of.

My life.

I thought about it, defined it: I live in a small A-frame, a prefab, on a lake in Wisconsin. Alone. I’m within an easy drive of Lake Geneva, where I belong to the Playboy Club, where I spend a night or two a week, when I’m not working. One night a week I play cards with some friends of mine down at Twin Lakes, mostly old guys who’ve retired, doctors and dentists and lawyers who stay the year round, though the crowd changes during the summer and the winter skiing months, when some men closer my age drift into the penny ante game. Once a year I go to Las Vegas and gamble and do my best to screw some pretty girls; sometimes I win. Once a year, in the winter, I go to Fort Lauderdale and soak up some sun. When I’m at the lake, in summer months, I swim and sun and water ski when I can find a knowledgeable female assistant to help me with my boat. There are many nice outdoor things to do around there in the fall, and the spring too, but in the winter I stay inside and listen to my stereo and watch television and read an occasional paperback western. When I’m not working.

A nice life: comfortable, better than comfortable. I work six, maybe seven jobs a year, for varying fees, my yearly income averages between fifteen and twenty thousand, a lot for a man alone, though I manage to spend every cent every year. I pay taxes on an income of seven or eight thousand, under my salesman cover; Broker fills out the IRS forms for me. My cover is something of a joke: door-to-door salesman of women’s “personal wear,” meaning hosiery and lingerie and the like. I still take along a sample case and credentials, but first year or so I took the case door-to-door some, establishing myself in whatever town the hit was in as a salesman, while Boyd was doing his lookout thing. Later I decided that was stupid. It was better to be invisible, and the cover was useless as far as cops were concerned anyway. After all, cops wouldn’t ask questions till you did something, and the only thing you would do is kill some guy, immediately after which you’d be the hell out of town. And if they did happen to catch you in the act or something, a fuck of a lot of good a damn sample case of underwear is going to do you.

“You mind if we join you, son?”

I got off my back to tread water and looked down toward the shallow section of the pool where a short, fat-bellied guy in his fifties, who was the one who’d spoken, and a short but skinny guy with white hair all over his chest and none on his head who was also in his fifties, were sloshing their way into the water. I stroked over to the side and climbed out.

I said, “All yours, gentlemen. I was just getting out.”

The fat one nodded and grinned and the two men lolled around in the shallow end like a couple overage water babies.

There was an exercise room downstairs. I found it empty, which was the way I hoped to find it. Empty of people that is: the room had plenty of equipment, such as barbells and wall-pulleys and chinning bar and rowing machine. I spent a long time in there. Sweat rolled off my body and got the bad things in me out. I exercised mechanically, with speed and concentration, with a pleasant mindlessness that was just what I needed right then.

But when I started to get tired the thinking hit me again. I was on the rowing machine and I got to thinking about Boyd and Broker and my job and how long was it all going to last, anyway?

I was spoiled, maybe, from five years of smooth runs, five years of nothing-goes-wrong and then all of a sudden Boyd loses his edge and almost gets me killed last job. Then Broker pulls that half-ass, last-minute airport deal on me, where it’s not enough I off the guy, I got to play strong-arm and delivery boy too. By that Broker betrayed the trust I had in him and our working arrangement.

Your mind works things out sometimes. Your subconscious, I mean. In my mind somewhere I knew that if I ever wanted to quit doing what I was, I ought to have some money laid aside to fall back on. But I didn’t: I had spent every nickel and that was something I never faced. But my subconscious did. My subconscious made me hold onto half that load of heroin. My subconscious was responsible for me having that little key to that little locker forty miles away at the Quad City Airport. A locker that had a bag of stuff in it that was my nest egg, my ticket out of Broker’s loving arms, my everything. Till I found something else at least.

My subconscious had made a decision: get the hell out. I’ve lost faith in Broker. And Boyd. This is it for me. Just this one damn dipshit little job. Just wipe out this one poor mark, this Albert Leroy who’s dead on his feet anyway, and quit or disappear or whatever but get the hell out! No more Boyd, no more Broker, maybe quit the racket altogether. Maybe not. It isn’t the killing. It’s working with people I got no trust in is killing me.