Everything's Eventual

parked beside the idling Mercedes and rolled my window down. At the same time, the driver's-side window of the Mercedes rolled down. We looked at each other, me and Mr. Sharpton, like a couple of old friends meeting at the Hi-Hat Drive-In.

   I don't remember much about him now. That's weird, considering all the time I've spent thinking about him since, but it's the truth. Only that he was thin, and that he was wearing a suit. A good one, I think, although judging stuff like that's not my strong point. Still, the suit eased me a little. I guess that, unconsciously, I had this idea that a suit means business, and jeans and a tee-shirt means fuckery.

   'Hello, Dink,' he says. 'I'm Mr. Sharpton. Come on in here and sit down.'

   'Why don't we just stay the way we are?' I asked. 'We can talk to each other through these windows. People do it all the time.'

   He only looked at me and said nothing. After a few seconds of that, I turned off the Ford and got out. I don't know exactly why, but I did. I was more scared than ever, I can tell you that. Real-scared. Real as real as real. Maybe that was why he could get me to do what he wanted.

   I stood between Mr. Sharpton's car and mine for a minute, looking at the Kart Korral and thinking about Skipper. He was tall, with this wavy blond hair he combed straight back from his forehead. He had pimples, and these red lips, like a girl wearing lipstick. 'Hey Dinky, let's see your dinky,' he'd say. Or 'Hey Dinky, you want to suck my dinky?' You know, witty shit like that. Sometimes, when we were rounding up the carts, he'd chase me with one, nipping at my heels with it and going 'Rmmmm! Rmmmmm! Rmmmmm!' like a fucking race-car. A couple of times he knocked me over. At dinnerbreak, if I had my food on my lap, he'd bump into me good and hard, see if he could knock something onto the floor. You know the kind of stuff I'm talking about, I'm sure. It was like he'd never gotten over those ideas of what's funny to bored kids sitting in the back row of study hall.

   I had a ponytail at work, you had to wear your hair in a ponytail if you had it long, supermarket rules, and sometimes Skipper would come up behind me, grab the rubber band I used, and yank it out. Sometimes it would snarl in my hair and pull it. Sometimes it would break and snap against my neck. It got so I'd stick two or three extra rubber bands in my pants pocket before I left for work. I'd try not to think about why I was doing it, what I was putting up with. If I did, I'd probably start hating myself.

   Once I turned around on my heels when he did that, and he must have seen something on my face, because his teasing smile went away and another one came up where it had been. The teasing smile didn't show his teeth, but the new one did. Out in the box-room, this was, where the north wall is always cold because it backs up against the meat-locker. He raised his hands and made them into fists. The other guys sat around with their lunches, looking at us, and I knew none of them would help. Not even Pug, who stands about five-feetfour anyway and weighs about a hundred and ten pounds. Skipper would have eaten him like candy, and Pug knew it.

   'Come on, assface,' Skipper said, smiling that smile. The broken rubber band he'd stripped out of my hair was dangling between two of his knuckles, hanging down like a little red lizard's tongue. 'Come on, you want to fight me? Come on, sure. I'll fight you.'

   What I wanted was to ask why it had to be me he settled on, why it was me who somehow rubbed his fur wrong, why it had to be any guy. But he wouldn't have had an answer. Guys like Skipper never do. They just want to knock your teeth out. So instead, I just sat back down and picked up my sandwich again. If I tried to fight Skipper, he'd likely put me in the hospital. I started to eat, although I wasn't hungry anymore. He looked at me a second or two longer, and I thought he might go after me, anyway, but then he unrolled his fists. The broken rubber band dropped onto the floor beside a smashed lettuce-crate. 'You waste,' Skipper said. 'You fucking longhair hippie waste.' Then he walked away. It was only a few days later that he mashed my fingers between two of the carts in the Korral, and a few days after that Skipper was lying on satin in the Methodist Church with the organ playing. He brought it on himself, though. At least that's what I thought then.

   'A little trip down Memory Lane?' Mr. Sharpton asked, and that jerked me back to the present. I was standing between his car and mine, standing by the Kart Korral where Skipper would never mash anyone else's fingers.

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

   'And it doesn't matter. Hop in here, Dink, and let's have a little talk.'

   I opened the door of the Mercedes and got in. Man, that smell. It's leather, but not just leather. You know how, in Monopoly, there's a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card? When you're rich enough to afford a car that smells like Mr. Sharpton's gray Mercedes, you must have a GetOut-of-Everything-Free card.

   I took a deep breath, held it, then let it out and said, 'This is eventual.'

   Mr. Sharpton laughed, his clean-shaven cheeks gleaming in the dashboard lights. He didn't ask what I meant; he knew. 'Everything's eventual, Dink,' he said. 'Or can be, for the right person.'

   'You think so?'

   'Know so.' Not a shred of doubt in his voice.

   'I like your tie,' I said. I said it just to be saying something, but it was true, too. The tie wasn't what I'd call eventual, but it was good. You know those ties that are printed all over with skulls or dinosaurs or little golf-clubs, stuff like that? Mr. Sharpton's was printed all over with swords, a firm hand holding each one up.

   He laughed and ran a hand down it, kind of stroking it. 'It's my lucky tie,' he said. 'When I put it on, I feel like King Arthur.' The smile died off his face, little by little, and I realized he wasn't joking. 'King Arthur, out gathering the best men there ever were. Knights to sit with him at the Round Table and remake the world.'

   That gave me a chill, but I tried not to show it. 'What do you want with me, Art? Help you hunt for the Holy Grail, or whatever they call it?'

   'A tie doesn't make a man a king,' he said. 'I know that, in case you were wondering.'

   I shifted, feeling a little uncomfortable. 'Hey, I wasn't trying to put you down—'

   'It doesn't matter, Dink. Really. The answer to your question is I'm two parts headhunter, two parts talent scout, and four parts walking, talking destiny. Cigarette?'

'I don't smoke.'

   'That's good, you'll live longer. Cigarettes are killers. Why else would people call them coffin- nails?'

   'You got me,' I said.

   'I hope so,' Mr. Sharpton said, lighting up. 'I most sincerely hope so. You're top-shelf goods, Dink. I doubt if you believe that, but it's true.'

   'What's this offer you were talking about?'

   'Tell me what happened to Skipper Brannigan.'

   Kabam, my worst fear come true. He couldn't know, nobody could, but somehow he did. I only sat there feeling numb, my head pounding, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth like it was glued there.

   'Come on, tell me.' His voice seemed to be coming in from far away, like on a shortwave radio late at night.

   I got my tongue back where it belonged. It took an effort, but I managed. 'I didn't do anything.' My own voice seemed to be coming through on that same shitty shortwave band. 'Skipper had an accident, that's all. He was driving home and he went off the road. His car rolled over and went into Lockerby Stream. They found water in his lungs, so I guess he drowned, at least technically, but it was in the paper that he probably would have died, anyway. Most of his head got torn off in the rollover, or that's what people say. And some people say it wasn't an accident, that he killed himself, but I don't buy that. Skipper was . . . he was getting too much fun out of life to kill himself.'

   'Yes. You were part of his fun, weren't you?'

   I didn't say anything, but my lips were trembling and there were tears in my eyes.