Caught Stealing - Charlie Huston [41]
—I’m making them, Timmy, my boy, I’m making them.
—Damn.
Lisa comes over and passes me my bag and I stuff all my new first-aid crap into it.
—Ready for a drink yet?
—Naw, just get me a . . .
—Yeah?
—Fuck. Get me a seltzer.
She chuckles and gets me my seltzer. Tim tosses back a shot of Tullamore Dew and shakes his head.
—Seltzer! Now that! That is what I call a healthy life choice.
Lisa plops the soda down in front of me and I pick it up and raise it in Tim’s direction.
—To healthy life choices.
He lifts another shot and clinks it against my glass.
—To health.
We drink. He slams his empty shot back down on the bar and Lisa tops it right off. With Tim you don’t have to ask, you just keep him full and put another mark on his tab. The seltzer’s not bad, not bad at all, kind of refreshing and I feel good, here in the bar with people I know and like, with friends. And in my head I hear a voice telling me, We know all your friends. Which one?
I don’t say good-bye. I just pick up my bag and leave.
It’s rush hour. Impossible to find an empty cab. I start jogging west. I could call, but if someone is there, it might freak them out or something. Fuck, I don’t know. I jog and keep looking at the traffic, searching for an in-service cab. At Third Avenue I strap the athletic bag on tight and start to run. I reach, I stretch for my stride and, this time, I find it. I blow down the street. It’s too far to keep this up all the way. Across Union Square, on University, a guy is just getting out of a cab and the cabbie is flicking on the off-duty light. I cram myself through the door and into the backseat. The cabbie starts yelling something at me in whatever his native tongue is. I push a big wad of cash through the Plexiglas shield and he shuts up.
—West Side Highway and Christopher.
He looks at the money I’ve dropped on the front seat. It’s well over a hundred dollars and he pulls away from the curb. We don’t talk. He looks at me from time to time in the rearview, but we don’t talk at all.
He stops on the highway where it meets Christopher, I climb out and he drives off. The traffic is too dense for me to try to cross, so I have to wait for the lights to change. When they do, I run over to the building, let myself in and run up the stairs. None of the locks to the apartment door are fastened.
Just inside there is a grocery bag full of cat stuff spilled out over the floor. I don’t want to look up from the mess, but I do. She’s all over the table, spread-eagle with her limbs strapped to its legs. Lying in the same space I occupied a few hours ago. They’ve done something horrible to her. The kiln is still on and the whole room smells like burning. I approach her with my head turned away. Then, with my eyes closed, I place my ear against her chest to hear that she is dead. I run to the futon for a blanket and cover her. Then I crawl under the table to hide.
In action movies, there is a moment where the hero is just pushed too far. The bad guys have stolen his money, taken his good name and beat him up and he’s swallowed it all. But then they go that one step too far: they kill his partner, his wife, his kid, whatever. This moment is indicated by the hero tilting his head back and releasing an agonized scream: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Then he gets mad.
I don’t feel like that at all. I want to sleep. I want to roll over and die. I want to give up and lose. I don’t care. I just don’t care.
They followed me. They followed me from my apartment to Yvonne’s and then they waited. They watched her come and go and kept waiting until they saw me leave and saw the cowboys throw me in the trunk. Then maybe someone followed us, and Paris lost them or maybe fucking not. But they waited until she left again and they went up to look for the key and when she came back they asked her where it was and she didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about because I didn’t tell her anything that might have saved her life.
I hear a soft, regular thumping on the floor and look up to see Bud coming