Эд Макбейн - Guns

The day has turned hot and humid; he takes off the wool plaid jacket and throws it onto the seat of the truck. He isn’t worried about his bandaged arm being seen; there is no law against getting bit by a dog. He has put the Smith & Wesson in the glove compartment and he leaves it there now, and hitches up his belt when he gets out of the truck, and then walks casually toward the drugstore. He would not walk this casually if he had not killed a man last night. He is exaggerating everything. He does not know why. He is sure it’s because he has rabies.

The drugstore is one of those places that sell everything from desk lamps to inflatable whales for swimming pools. He pities a poor guy coming in here to have a prescription filled cause he’d never find where they keep the drugs. Behind the lunch counter there’s a waitress wearing black slacks and a pale-blue blouse. Colley thinks of Jill in the diner, the way she came on with that truck driver, dumb fuck with a button on his hat. She’ll probably be talking about the holdup for the rest of her life. Tell her children and her grandchildren about it. At the far end of the counter there’s an old guy wearing a fedora on the back of his head. He is sucking his teeth and mumbling to himself. The waitress comes over to Colley.

“Hi,” she says. She is a girl in her twenties, black hair pulled back in a ponytail, brown eyes, full figure.

Colley figures she’s Italian; with that coloring it’s eight-to-five she isn’t Irish. He feels a little bit safer thinking she’s Italian. He’s about to get something to eat, and he’s alone here in the drugstore with just an Italian waitress, an old guy sucking his teeth, and a cashier sitting there at the checkout counter. The drugstore has a checkout counter like a supermarket, it’s really a supermarket in disguise. The drugstore goes into a phone booth, takes off all its clothes, and out flies a supermarket.

“Hi,” Colley says. “I’d like a hamburger and a cold beer.”

“You can get the hamburger, but all we’ve got is soft drinks.”

“Okay, a Coke then. Put everything you got on the burger, okay?”

“Well, what’d you want?” the waitress says.

“Relish and a slice of tomato and some onions and pickles, everything you got.”

“Are you pregnant or something?” the girl asks, and smiles.

“No, I got rabies,” Colley says, and returns the smile.

At the end of the counter the old man says, “Everybody’s got something wrong with them. There’s nobody in the world has nothing wrong with them.”

The girl taps her temple, indicating the old man is nuts. Colley nods. She goes over to where the hamburger patties are, and puts one on the griddle and then goes to draw his Coke. Colley is thinking he should hide the crew cut. The cops are sure to have questioned Jeanine, and she is sure to have told them who he is and how she cut his hair early this morning. He doesn’t expect there’s been any big television flash about the diner holdup, that’ll wait till the six o’clock news tonight, if it gets on the air at all. There’s maybe been radio news about it, but he’s not worried about that because you can’t show what a man looks like on a radio broadcast. What he’s afraid of is that Jeanine has told the Jersey cops about him and they have contacted the New York cops, who have sent pictures to the toll collectors at the bridges and tunnels. So he takes a sip of Coke, and while his hamburger is cooking he gets up and wanders around the drugstore, looking for something he can put on his head. He finds a billed cap that looks like the kind of hat his brother Albert used to wear when they went fishing together. That was when they first moved to the Bronx. Albert used to take him out to City Island, and they used to go fishing. The cap is blue, it looks just like the hat Albert used to wear. He tries it on, and then takes it back to the counter with him.

“Where do I pay for this?” he asks the waitress.

“The food here, the hat at the checkout,” she says. “What happened to your arm?”

“A dog bit me,” he says.

“You really got rabies?”

“No, no.”

“Cause that’s catching, ain’t it? Rabies?”

At the far end of the counter the old man says, “There’s nobody in the world has nothing wrong with them.”

“It’s only catching if I bite you,” Colley says, and smiles.

“You’re not going to bite me, are you?” the girls says. She is looking at him sideways, like a sultry movie queen in an old television movie, sort of from under partially closed lids. She has one hand on her hip. Behind her the hamburger is sizzling on the griddle.

“No, I’m not going to bite you,” Colley says.

“How you want this hamburger?” she says.

“Medium rare.”

She goes to the griddle, shovels the hamburger off it and puts it on a bun. Then she puts two slices of tomato on it, and some pickles and relish and onions, and she throws a couple of green olives and a piece of celery on the plate and brings it over to him. The hamburger is delicious. He has never tasted anything so delicious in his life. The girl watches him as he eats. It is as if she has never before seen a hungry man eating. She watches each move he makes, she watches the hamburger coming up to his mouth, and his teeth closing over it, she watches him chewing and swallowing, she is making a documentary on what it is like to eat a hamburger.

“You’re not a bit hungry, are you?” she says.

“Nobody,” the old man at the end of the counter says. “Nobody in the world has nothing wrong. Miss?” he says.

“Yes, sir?” she says.

“I would like a check, please.”

“Yes, sir,” she says, and walks over to him.

Colley watches her behind in the tight black slacks. She knows he is looking at her. She exaggerates her walk. She is wearing low-heeled shoes, but she struts over to the old man as if she is wearing rhinestone slippers with three-inch spikes. As she makes out the old man’s ticket, she glances at Colley and smiles. He nods. He is beginning to think he may not go back to New York after all. Where can he go in New York? He goes to his mother’s place, the fuzz’ll be there waiting. He can’t go to Teddy’s house, Teddy’ll slam the door in his face. And the cops have a dossier on all the guys used to be in the Orioles, they’ll be watching Benny’s pad, all the guys, what’s the sense of going back there? Back there is where he killed the cop. At least here in Jersey the cop beef ain’t theirs. All they’re worried about is the diner holdup. He thinks maybe he will explore this little Italian waitress a wee bit further.

He knows he is very good with girls, and he further knows he is very good-looking. But he is also smart enough to know there isn’t a man alive who doesn’t think he himself is good-looking. Man looks in the mirror, he says to himself, “Good morning, you handsome irresistible devil.” He’d catch guys in prison looking at themselves in the mirror, preening. Ugliest sons of bitches in the world, you ran into one of them in a dark alley you’d drop dead of a heart attack just looking at them. Preening. Good morning, you handsome irresistible devil. So he’s smart enough to know that maybe he’s mistaken about how good-looking he is or isn’t, but he knows he has a pretty fair batting average with girls, and he prides himself on the fact that he’s never had to pay for it in his life. That’s not to say he hasn’t fucked whores, because he has. But he’s never paid for it. Never. He is pretty confident that the girl here in the drugstore finds him attractive, and he is also confident that he can make her.

The old man gets off the stool and counts his change. He stares at the change in the palm of his hand and then counts it again. When he approaches the checkout counter, the cashier puts down her confession magazine and looks annoyed because she think’s she’s perhaps going to have to stop reading and do her job instead. But the old man has paid at the lunch counter, and he jerks his thumb back at the waitress, and the cashier nods and picks up the confession magazine, and he goes through the checkout and out of the drugstore.