Alligator - Lisa Moore [52]
He passes a guy with a hot-dog stand. There’s a lineup all around the stand and just the sight of it makes Frank want to take a bat to it.
He was in Sears buying the duvet cover that afternoon and the salesgirl said wet bar.
What you want is a wet bar, she said.
He didn’t like to drink. He especially wasn’t interested in stocking a bar. But he followed her down the aisle because she had a walk.
He followed her down the aisle because it was air-conditioned in the Village Mall. He’d bought a soft serve and sat in the food court where his mother used to take him for a treat.
He saw that there were a lot of handicapped people in the food court, and people who looked fucked up in one way or another, and then he saw the two Russians who’d moved into the bed-sit above his and they saw him and he finished his cone and walked through Sears because he didn’t want to leave the mall right away in case they noticed and thought he was afraid of them.
They had come to his stand on George Street the night before and they stood on the curb just behind him and they watched him selling hot dogs. George Street was full of crowds, there was a band outdoors, people had plastic cups of beer, and the Russians just stood there watching him for more than an hour.
He had paid good money for the permit and it was his permit.
The guy named Valentin waited with his hands linked behind his back.
They just stood there and looked at the crowds.
Valentin had on a pair of sunglasses and the lenses were black and he wore a black leather jacket.
Some customers came and Frank put on some Polish sausages and he slit them with the knife and the fat leaked out and the flames sizzled. There were three customers and they took a long time dressing the hot dogs and when they left Valentin stepped up beside Frank and he said he wanted Frank’s stand and he wanted the permit.
Frank put down the tongs he had for turning the wieners and he wiped his hands on his apron.
We will offer a good price, said Valentin.
The hot-dog stand isn’t for sale, Frank said. Valentin lifted his lip then in a kind of slow snarl and a toothpick unfolded out of his mouth and he picked at his eyetooth with it and examined the pick and dropped it in the gutter. His black sunglasses were full of the coloured lanterns that were strung across the street. He turned and the lanterns ran across the black lenses, one after the other. The city had done up George Street to look like drinking was a Newfoundland tradition. But the old-fashioned street lights were brand new.
Valentin was taking all this in, this Old World look. There was a strip joint very near the hot-dog stand and the windows were covered with posters so you couldn’t look in, but light leaked out the sides. Frank glanced over at the taxi drivers and he noticed Lloyd with his back against his car, his arms folded over his chest. Someone in the Sundance had started up the mechanical bull. They could hear the rodeo music and the metal wrenching kicks and bucks and the yowls of whoever was riding it.
The permit is my permit, said Frank.
I think you’ll change your mind, Valentin said. At first Frank thought there might be something that wasn’t translating properly.
I think you’ll change your mind. He waited in case something else was coming. He waited for something else. He waited for things not to be the way they were.
But everything was the way it was.
He had understood perfectly.
Valentin had made himself understood.
Frank saw that things were exactly the way he had always understood things to be all his life. He had understood things to be this way when he was five and had to go into a foster home because his mother was hospitalized for breast cancer and had to have both her breasts removed.
He had understood things to be this way on several different occasions when he was, however briefly, a guest of the Whitbourne Correctional Institute for Juvenile Delinquents at the age of fourteen after a bout of shoplifting