SIX
Lee returned to the store somewhere around five and parked her books beneath the counter. When she had straightened up, she waved to me briefly and smiled, then turned her head away in mock embarrassment. Her hair was uncombed, and I imagined it matted and spread out upon a pillow. My blood pressure jumped a bit, and I kept my stare on her until she felt it enough to look once more in my direction.
When the transfer truck pulled around back, the sales crew typically scattered. McGinnes bolted for the back room, and Lloyd gathered up his things and left for the evening.
As I went to the back door, I noticed Malone and a younger guy talking in the Sound Explosion. The man was wearing a velvet maroon jogging suit and a thick, braided gold chain around his neck. They shook hands for an artificially long time, then Malone buried his fist and its contents into his pocket.
I unloaded the truck with the help of a driver I recognized from the warehouse, a wiry, hard-looking young man who wore his Nathan’s cap backwards and had a cigarette lodged above his ear. We worked without speaking until he departed with a tough nod.
I managed the merchandise onto the conveyer belt, which ran parallel to the stairs leading down to the stockroom. I walked alongside the crated goods until they hit a flat, rollered surface at the foot of the stairs, then pulled the power lever back from d Excenuforward” to the “off” position.
I heard the crush of an empty can and looked up to see McGinnes stepping out of the shadows of the stockroom’s far corner. A fresh malt liquor filled one hand, his brass pipe the other. He handed me the can while he filled the pipe.
I drank deeply from the can. He lit the pipe thoroughly and then we traded. The pot was smooth passing my throat but singed my lungs. I made it through half an exhale before coughing out the rest and reaching back for the malt liquor. McGinnes pulled another can out from the inside of his sportjacket, popped the tab, and tapped my can with his. We tipped our heads back and drank.
We stood in a fairly thick blanket of smoke. McGinnes knocked the ash from the pipe onto his palm and filled another bowl. He lit it evenly with a circular motion of the disposable lighter flame he held above it. We smoked that while downing our Colts. I thought of how good a cigarette would taste, then thought of something else. I looked at McGinnes’ face and laughed. He thought that was funny, and both of us laughed.
“Evan Walters’ bucket came in,” I said. “You want it?”
“Yeah,” he said, and a wedge of black hair fell across his forehead. “Give it to me.”
I found it on the conveyer belt, a green cylinder wrapped in plastic and secured with a twist tie. I took a four-point stance, centered the bucket to myself, stepped back, and passed it to him with a surprising spiral. He caught and ran with it halfway across the stockroom, where he stopped and did some weird end-zone strut.
Walking back my way, he let out a short, mean burst of laughter. His jaws were tight and his eyes looked directionless, and I realized, in a sudden rush of alcohol and marijuana, that the way I felt just then was the way he felt all the time.
“Evan Walters,” he said, “deserves a little extra something for all the trouble he’s been through.” Mimicking Walters, he lowered his voice to an effete growl, and said, “I’ve been calling you for months, Mr. McGinnes, and frankly I don’t appreciate…”
He continued the speech as he unraveled the plastic, removed the top, lowered the bucket beneath his crotch, and unzipped his fly. He looked at me glumly, shut his eyes, found his pecker, and let fly a hard piss-stream into the mouth of the bucket.
“Come on, man… ”
“I’m a lawyer,” he whined, “and I want my ice bucket!” McGinnes washed the urine around with a circular motion, then flung it out and across the room where it crackled as some of it hit a hot, naked bulb. He reaffixed the plastic and secured it onto the bucket using the tie.
McGinnes handed me a mint, popped one in his own mouth, and raced up the stairs. I followed him up and out into the showroom. He seemed to be skipping down the aisle, swinging the bucket at his side as if it were a picnic basket. At the front counter he handed the bucket to Lee, who gave us both a disapproving look.
“Give this to a Mr. Walters when he comes in tonight,” he deadpanned, then walked away. ight='0eeight='0em'›
I had accumulated some dirt on my sleeves while unloading the transfer truck. Lee knocked it off, then brushed a hand across my chest to finish the job. I noticed that brown speck again in her eye.
“What have you boys been up to?” she asked, her smile twisting to one side.
“Science experiment in the basement.”
“Who’s closing tonight?”
“You, me, and Johnny.” She laughed, rather evilly I thought, and walked back behind the counter.
Malone stopped to tuck a silk scarf into his jacket before leaving. He patted his breast pocket, felt the deck of Newports, and showed a look of relief.
“All right, darling,” he said to Lee by way of goodnight, then turned to me. “All right, Country.”
“What about tonight, Andre? You meet us down at the Corps?”
He shook his head and pursed his lips in an exaggerated manner. “Uh-uh. I got that redbone freak, uh, young lady, coming over to my joint tonight for dinner, some cognac, you know what I’m saying?”
“Yeah.”
McGinnes yelled from across the floor, “You gonna get your face wet tonight, Jim?”
Malone said, “I don’t eat nuthin’ you can’t buy at Safeway.” He looked at Lee and said, “Pardon me, darling.” Then he turned and left the store.
The evening progressed with McGinnes and me hammering malt liquors one for one in the back room at an alarming rate. I was through smoking pot for the night, though the damage had been done during our earlier basement sessions. I lost count of our alcohol consumption, but I remember McGinnes racing next door to Mr. Liquor (in my opinion, the classic name for a spirit shoppe) and coming back with a tall brown bag in his arms, his eyebrows wiggling excitedly like the kid with the fake ID returning to the party.
Lee was reading a textbook up front and pretending to ignore us, though I caught her looking up often. By seven she had cracked a Colt and had begun nursing it in the back.
We had some traffic that night and initially handled it well. The early customers seemed oblivious to the fact that I was on a tear. I went through a good bit of eyewash and quite a few breathmints.
McGinnes, as was his fashion, became more aggressive and quicker with customers as his sobriety deteriorated, though this did not affect his closing rate. If anything, the alcohol made his rebuttals more certain, less open for debate.
I luckily hit upon several open, friendly customers who were intelligent enough to have an idea of what they wanted when they came through the door and not afraid to spend some money on it if it was offered at a fair price. Consequently, the pressure to perform impossible switches in front of McGinnes was taken off me. The confidence gai Conf was oned after my first sale of the evening spilled over into my rap with subsequent customers, and I was suddenly on a roll.
McGinnes became troubled by my momentum. At one point, when I moved to take an up, he stepped in front of me and threw an elbow into my stomach, keeping a wide smile plastered on his face as he greeted the customers. They turned out to be bait-snatchers who demanded to be sold the plunder, which only served to shake him further.
After he had written them up, he signaled me to the back. I followed him into the radio room, where he cracked two Colts. He handed me one and we both had long pulls.
“What’s on your mind?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said defensively, and reached into his pocket. He unraveled his fist to reveal two orange hexagonal pills, then jabbed that hand in my direction. “Eat one of these.”
“What is it?”
“Like a ’lude, only not as heavy.” He became impatient. “It’s just a painkiller.”
“Huh?”
