Show of Evil

'You're kidding?'

'Nope. Pot was my drug of choice.'

'Pot's illegal.'

'That's why I quit.'

She held up her glass. 'This isn't.'

'That doesn't make a lot of sense, either.'

'First time I tried grass, I sat in front of the oven in my friend's kitchen for an hour waiting for Johnny Carson to come on.'

Flaherty laughed hard and nodded. 'That must've been some good stuff.'

'I dunno, never tried it again,' she said, and realized her speech was getting a little slurred and Flaherty was suddenly transforming into twins. She closed one eye and focused across the table on his ruggedly handsome face. 'How come you never asked m'out?'

'I just did.'

'Uh-huh, six months later. I know you're not gay.'

'Nope.'

'And I, uh, I know I'm not that unesrable.' She stopped and giggled. 'Un-desir-able.'

'Oh no,' he said softly, and smiled.

'Well?'

'They don't have courses in the social graces on the streets of Boston - or in the state reformatory.'

'You were that bad?'

'I was pretty bad.'

'Wha's the worst thing y'ever did? Or maybe I shouldn't ask.'

'Boosting cars.'

 'You stole cars?'

He nodded. 'Me and my buddies.'

'Can you do tha' thing they do in the movies, y'know, where they rip all th'wires out f'the dashboard and make 'em spark and start th'car? Can you do that?' She closed one eye again and focused hard on him.

'You mean hot-wiring?' he said, nodding. 'Sixty seconds, anything on wheels.'

'Y'r kiddin!'

'Nope.'

'Wow. Why'd you quit?'

'I had a revelation. God appeared at the foot of my bed one night and told me if I kept it up I was gonna die young.'

'And…'

'I took him seriously.'

'She didn't really,'

Parver said sceptically.

'She?'

'God.'

'Oh.' Flaherty smiled and made rings on the table with his wet glass. 'In a way she did. One of my best friends went to the chair. He was robbing a grocery store and killed a cop. I mean, we were close, Ernie and I had done jobs together.'

'That was his name, Ernie?'

'Ernie Holleran. There were five of us, hung out together, did stuff together. Ernie was one of us. But he did that thing and they maxed him out and the night they did it to him, we took the bus up to the state pen and we found this hill where you could see the prison and got two-six packs and sat there drinking and waiting until they did it. You can tell because when they throw the switch, the lights fade out, then come back on. They do it twice, just to make sure. We sat there until the Black Maria left with him and we threw empty beer cans at the hearse and then we took the bus back home. That's the night God spoke to me. I decided I wasn't going out that way.'

She was staring at him with one eye still closed, her mouth half open, mesmerized by his story.

'Know what?' she said after a while. 'I'm not inter'sted, in-ter-ested, in social graces, Flay.' She finished half her drink and slapped the glass back down on the table. 'I'm in-ter-ested in scilnit, sincilat - '

'Scintilating?'

'Thank you… conversation, and, uh, and a beaut'ful man with lovely eyes and dark bl'ck hair and… sufer, sulper - '

'Superficial?'

'Than'you, su-per-fi-cial things like that. How come you always wear black, Flay? Why d'you have this Johnny Cash symrom… sidro..syn-drome.'