Alligator - Lisa Moore [50]
He would like to tell her, or have her intuit, how much respect he had for his mother and how empty the world is without her. He would like to explain how he feels like he has a hole in his chest. He would like her to put her hand on his chest and show him once and for all there is no hole and then he’d like her to undo his jeans and put her mouth all over him.
The door to the bar is open because it’s so hot and the smell of pigeon shit and smoke and the harbour comes in very cool. And maybe the smell of those worm droppings that are covering the sidewalks in a wet muck and smell like cat’s piss. Everybody’s face is dew-struck and soft-featured because of the drinking and Frank’s just stopped in on his way to the hotdog cart.
He has to get to the hot-dog cart. But couldn’t he just ask her maybe to dance?
He’ll make money tonight hand over fist. There will be light breaking over the South Side Hills by the time he heads home. George Street will be covered in garbage, drunks lurching, the cops will be out.
Frank has a permit for the corner of George Street, which is the best spot in the city. This is a street with bars on both sides and is famous now for the festival, which is just drinking all night long.
He had to get down to City Hall before it opened and line up to get that spot. He paid good money.
A guy can move hot dogs on George Street.
He’s seen a guy out by Sobey’s Square have to depend on when the movies let out. The guy spends all his time looking at an empty parking lot. George Street in the summer and Frank can pull in close to a grand every week.
The taxi drivers keep him company. Gulliver’s Taxis lined up near the pizza place across the street, the drivers leaning on their cars, the ends of their cigarettes moving in the dark.
They’re the kind of men who have a little timeshare trailer somewhere in the Florida Keys they drive down to because they are afraid to fly and their children are grown up and some of them have done a bit of time and they have faded tattoos on their hands to prove it, between the thumb and index finger, a sword and cross or a four-leaf clover, their wives want to go to Florida for their arthritis and you can’t hang on to it one guy said because they put you in a home and the government just takes it and there’s bastards sat off on their arses their whole lives collecting dole and doing fuck all and you know what they get? The same sort of bed in the same sort of old-age home as guys that worked all night long on George Street dragging vomiting drunks in and out of cars for the last thirty years. College kids losing their stomachs all over the upholstery, more money than you can bat an eye, they have to hose the van out the next morning, and so they spend two weeks of the winter in Florida because their youngsters won’t get a cent after they’re gone, the home will eat it all up, nest egg my fucking foot, and please, God, I’ll be taken in my sleep before it comes to that.
The taxi drivers are something else, Frank knows, but they keep an eye on him because he works so hard and they kid him about being skinny and they say stuff about his wiener but mostly they watch out for him because when he leaves the corner of George Street after a night on the hot-dog stand he can have as much as five hundred bucks on him.
Just a kid, they tell each other.
At 4 a.m. everyone wants a hot dog, the taxi drivers tell him as they pull out their wallets and hand him a five and look off into the fog or rain and wait while the wieners barbecue.
Give me some of them what are they banana peppers my stomach will hate me, they say.
A crowd tonight, they tell him.
What have you got a cold drink back there, Frank?
Have you got a girl, Frank? I bet you got a girl, they say.
Look at Frank, look at the colour of him.
He must have a girl.
Some crowd tonight, Frank, they say. Give me a couple of them napkins. The taxi drivers come over and talk whether