coming. Black ball cap, big old blue polo shirt hanging loose over new jeans. One more middle-aged white guy trying to hide his thinning hair and spare tire. She’s looking for a john to jack and he could be the one. Take him in the alley behind the dumpster and while he’s busy thinking about her mouth on his thing and all those sweet noises she’ll be making that wallet will pop out his back pocket like that button on the turkey when it’s ready at Thanksgiving. Even if he wakes up, what’s he going to do? She has a blade in her back pocket and can fillet him like a fish. Johns don’t go to the cops neither, because what they gonna say? Cops will put in about one second flat, worrying about that wallet. What you deserve, you go looking to nut on Van Buren. Take that back to New York. “You wanna date, honey?”
Man keeps walking, like he can’t see her, like she’s invisible. She walks alongside him.
“Honey, you wanna date?”
“Not today.”
“I’ll show you a
“I’m sure you would.”
“You can be sure.”
“Another time, baby. I’m busy.”
I ain’t your baby, baby. I ain’t nobody’s baby, baby baby baby. “What other time, baby? I’m out here all day.”
The man just keeps walking. Walking and sweating. Maybe she’ll see him on the way back from wherever he’s going, he’s so busy.
Her feet hurt.
Itching in the heat.
Jerry finds the Tahiti Inn.
Just in time too, because another two minutes he might have passed out. Last freaking job I take in the desert, he thinks, in the summer anyway. They want some guy taken off the roster in Phoenix in August, they can call somebody else.
The money is good, anyway. Do the job, hit the airport, fly back to Providence, and take Marcy on a little weekend to Block Island, like she’s been bugging him. Not much to ask, and she’s a good baby, Marcy, she don’t make too much trouble.
He walks past the big sign with the goofy tiki mask. The main office is shaped like a Tahitian hut, or what they think it looks like, anyway. Jerry doesn’t know—he’s never been to Tahiti or even Hawaii. Maybe he should spend a dollar and take Marcy to Hawaii, might not be a bad idea to get a little distance after this. Sit on the beach, watch the girls do the hula, maybe get Marcy fired up a little to lose those last five pounds.
Room 134.
They told him Rosavich is in 134.
Good. No stairs to go up or down.
He finds 134, pulls out the gun and holds it behind his back, then knocks on the door.
Abe dances with Estelle.
In his waking dream, the sun having lulled him into semisleep. In this dream that is not a dream, he’s in the old El Capri Ballroom, whirling her around, little dots of perspiration on her neck as she looks up at him and smiles. She wears a cornflower-blue dress and a string of pearls.
They had come down to Phoenix after the thing with Sol Hirsch went bad. Poor, stupid Sollie, hanging from the rafter in that loft while they took baseball bats to him. He finally told them what they wanted to know, but Abe had felt sick after that, and tired, so he’d said to Estelle, “Let’s take the new Buick down to Phoenix, stay on Van Buren. Do some dining, some dancing, get a tan.” She wouldn’t sit out in the sun, though, she said she liked her skin white and so did he. The few minutes she would sit out with him she’d wear that big floppy sun hat, even in the pool; she did the breast stroke and kept her head above the water. Then she’d go into the room, into the cool dark, and read paperback books and nap until he was ready to go to dinner.
That night at the El Capri she was so pretty.
He was young and handsome.
Van Buren was beautiful.
He sees Sollie Hirsch, his hand jerks, knocks the glass of grapefruit juice over, and he wakes up. Wonders where he is and then sees he’s on Van Buren under a white hot sun.
She don’t find nobody.
Cars go by but don’t even slow down to take a look. No one walks by—everybody has found a cool, dark place to be.
Everybody except me, she thinks.
Ain’t no cool, dark place for me in this bleached-out world.
The door opens and Jerry steps into a world of darkness.
So dark after the bright sun that he can’t see Benny Ro-savich spring cat-quick with the knife.
Rosavich plunges the blade into Jerry’s leg and then slices sideways, severing the femoral artery. Jerry screams and backs out the door, which slams shut in front of him. The pistol falls from his hand and clatters on the baked concrete. He grabs his leg, trying to hold the blood in, but it pours around his fingers as he staggers out past the goofy sign and the Tahitian hut, onto Van Buren Street.
Abe looks down from his balcony and sees the man stumble up the sidewalk. A disgrace for a man to be drunk this early in the day. A disgrace and a shame. The man stops as if he’s lost and Abe wonders for a moment if he has sunstroke, then he sees the trail of blood and the man pirouette in an almost graceful dance before he staggers on.
Evie sees him come back.
Walking all goofy, like he’s messed up on glue or paint or something. She looks for the gold ring around his lips but doesn’t see any and then she realizes that he’s
Evie looks around, don’t see nobody but some old man trying to stand up on the motel balcony. She reaches down and slips the wallet from the man’s back jeans pocket where it was all snug and tight against the new fabric.
Then she walks up the alley into a thin slice of shadow.
Jerry rolls over.
Toward the sun.
Feels it in his face. It’s warm, and good now, because the rest of him is cold and he’s shivering.
He looks up at the sweet sun and smiles. Then the world goes white.
BY THE TIME HE GOT TO PHOENIX
BY DOGO BARRY GRAHAM
Luis wanted to go and get Catboy, but he knew he couldn’t. The cops might be watching the apartment, and even if they weren’t, they would certainly have forced their way in by now. They would either have taken Catboy to the pound or just ignored him, in which case he would be on the street. Luis fought a temptation to drive around and look for him.
He knew he’d better get out of town right away. At first he thought that the cops would think he’d left by now, so it might be safer to stay put and hide. But where would he hide? Too many people knew what he looked like and might call the cops as soon as they saw him. He knew there would be many
