Juju came in and sat next to Nick.
'What's the word?'
'Your turn's coming,' Nick said. 'I see you married with three kids. Getting paunchy and going bald.'
'Come on, we bowl a few lines.'
'Forget about it. Not my sport. She'll let you out to bowl once a week.'
'People get married and have kids. This is not normal?'
'Bowling, to me, it's like lifting weights.'
'Do me a favor.'
'It's something I rather be bad at it than good at it.'
'But do me this one little favor.'
'Because being good at it means there's something wrong with you.'
'Forget I mentioned it, all right?'
'I rather die the death of a thousand cuts.'
'Everytime you see a Charlie Chan movie. Which, come to think of it, don't you owe me five bucks from the last time we bowled?'
'It's a brouch,' Nick told him.
'How come?'
'Because I'm not trying to win. Because winning insults my dignity. Beat me in pool I'll pay you the five dollars. Otherwise
The regulars taunted each other constantly and said things to the girls who showed up now and then and they always looked a little narrow at strangers walking in. But they were careful to be patient with ageless Lonzo even when he was slow or clumsy setting up the pins, a birdlike figure hunched aloft down there at the end of the lanes, white-eyed in the spatter of flying wood.
Juju found someone to bowl with and after a while Nick put down the magazine and left.
'Hey. Be good okay?'
'Be good, Jack.'
'Be good.'
'Be good,' Nick said.
It was dark and quiet now and he went up the narrow street toward his building but then swung into a gateway on an impulse and went down the steps and into the yards.
There was no light in the outer passage and he felt along the walls for the door that led inside. He smelled wet stone where the super had hosed the floors. He went inside and walked past the furnace room to the door at the end of the passage.
He still felt uneasy about the basement room, about the needle and strap and spoon, but it was passing little by little into faded time, half lost in the weave of a thousand things.
George was in the room all right, playing solitaire.
'I thought you might be here.'
'Cool down here.'
'That's what I thought,' Nick said.
George gathered and stacked the cards and shuffled them. Nick sat across the table and George dealt out three to a man and turned over a club trump and they started playing a game.
'The trouble with cards, when you play for money,' George said, 'and you concentrate on all those numbers and colors for hours and hours, a poker game into the morning, you can't fucking sleep when you go home.'
'Your mind's too active.'
'Ibu can't fucking no-way sleep.'
'Your brain is racing.'
'But we play a little friendly game of
'You have trouble, normally, sleeping?'
'I have trouble sleeping. I also have trouble staying awake.'
They laughed and played. They played for an hour and talked about nothing much and smoked a couple of cigarettes each and dropped the butts in an old beer bottle.
'This thing I want to show you. Found it a couple of days ago,' George said, 'in a car I was parking at the track. Slid out from under the seat when I made a quick turn.'
'The turns you make.'
'I'm cautious. Hey. Compared to most guys.'
'You respect the automobiles you park.'
'Not so much the owners. The cars, definitely.'
They laughed. George reached behind him and came up with an object from the bottom shelf, down behind paint cans and rolled linoleum.
It was a shotgun, sawed-off, the barrel extending only a couple of inches from the forearm part and the stock cut down to a pistol grip arrangement.
'What? You found it?'
'I didn't want to leave it in the car where somebody who's not responsible.'
'Let me see,' Nick said.
He reached across the table for the weapon. He sort of bounced it in his hands and then stood up to hold it more naturally.
'I know one thing about shotguns,' George said. 'You shoot with both eyes open.'
'Sawed-off is illegal, right?'
'That's the other thing I know. Once you cut the thing down it's a concealed weapon.'
'Looks old tome.'
'It's old, rusty wore out,' George said. 'Piece of, basically, junk.'
He posed with it, Nick did, a pirate's pistol or an old Kentucky flintlock if that's the word. It was more natural two hands than one, the left hand under the forepart to steady and point.
He hefted it and pointed it. He saw an interested smile fall across George's face. He had the weapon pointed at George. He was standing a couple of yards from George and George was in the chair and he held the weapon midbody, slightly above the hip, which meant it was pointed at George's head.
A little brightness entered George's eye. Rare in George. This brightness in the eye. And an interested look moved across his mouth. It was the slyest kind of shit-eating grin.
'Is it loaded?'
'No,' George said.
This made him smile a little wider. They were having a good time. And he had a look on his face that was more alive and bright than George had ever looked. Because he was interested in what they were doing.
Nick pulled the trigger,
In the extended interval of the trigger pull, the long quarter second, with the action of the trigger sluggish and rough, Nick saw into the smile on the other man's face.
Then the thing went off and the noise busted through the room and even with the chair and body flying he had the thumbmark of George's face furrowed in his mind.
The way the man said no when he asked if it was loaded.
He asked if the gun was loaded and the man said no and the smile was all about the risk, of course, the spirit of the dare of what they were doing.
He felt the trigger pull and then the gun went off and he was left there thinking weakly he didn't do it.
But first he pointed the gun at the man's head and asked if it was loaded.
Then he felt the trigger pull and heard the gun go off and the man and chair went different ways.
And the way the man said no when he asked if it was loaded.
