cough. It could also be pneumonia, Ricky thought, although the season was wrong for it. Ricky thought the man wore equal cloths of life and death.
After a few minutes, the man determined that he’d taken everything of value from the trash, and headed to the next canister. Ricky remained seated, keeping the man in sight. After a few moments dedicated to assessing that trash, the man strode off, pulling his cart behind him. Ricky trailed after him.
It did not take long to reach a street in Charlestown that was filled with low-slung and grimy stores. It was a place that catered to the disadvantaged of all sorts. A discount furniture outlet that offered in large letters written on the windows layaways and easy credit, spelling the word E-Z. Two pawnshops, an appliance store, a clothing outlet that had mannequins in the windows all of which seemed to be missing an arm or a leg, as if crippled or scarred in some accident. Ricky watched as the man he was following headed straight to the middle of the block, to a faded yellow painted square building with a prominent sign on the front: al’s discount soda and liquors. Beneath that was a second sign, in the same block print, nearly as large: redemption center. This sign had an arrow pointing to the rear.
The man towing the cart filled with cans marched directly around the corner of the building. Ricky followed after.
At the back of the store was a half door, with a similar sign above the lintel: redeem here. There was a small doorbell button to the side, which the man rang. Ricky shrank back against the wall, concealing himself.
Within a few seconds a teenager appeared at the half door. The transaction itself took only a few minutes. The man handed in the collection of cans, the teenager counted them, and then peeled off a couple of bills from a wad he pulled from his pocket. The man took the money, reached into one of the large pockets of the overcoat, and pulled out a fat, old leather wallet, stuffed with papers. He put a couple of the bills into the wallet, and then handed one of them back to the teenager. The kid disappeared, then returned moments later with a bottle, which he handed to the man.
Ricky slunk down, sitting on the alley cement, waiting while the man walked past him. The bottle, which Ricky assumed was some cheap wine, had already disappeared in the folds of the overcoat. The man cast a single glance toward Ricky, but they made no eye contact, as Ricky hung his head. He breathed in hard for another few seconds, then rose, and continued to follow the man.
In Manhattan, Ricky had played the mouse to Virgil, Merlin, and Rumplestiltskin’s cats. Now he was on the opposite side of the same equation. He hung back, then sped up, trying to keep the man in sight at all times, close enough to follow, distant enough to remain hidden. Armed now with the bottle concealed in his coat, the man marched ahead with purpose, like some military quick march with a destination in mind. His head pivoted about frequently, glancing in all directions, unmistakably afraid of being followed. Ricky thought that the man’s paranoid behavior was well founded.
They covered dozens of city blocks, winding in and out of traffic, the neighborhood they traveled through growing seedier with every stride. The day’s dwindling sun threw shadows across the roadways, and the peeling paint and decrepit storefronts seemed to mimic the appearance of both Ricky and his target.
He saw the man hesitate midblock, and as the man turned toward where Ricky was, Ricky dipped against a building, concealing himself. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the man abruptly lurch down an alleyway, a narrow crevasse between two brick buildings. Ricky took a deep breath, then followed.
He came up to the entrance to the alleyway and cautiously peered around the edge. It was a spot that seemed to greet the night well in advance. It was already dark and closed in, the sort of confined space that never warmed in the winter, nor cooled in the summer. Ricky could just make out a collection of abandoned cardboard boxes and a green steel Dumpster at the far end. The alleyway abutted the back of another building, and Ricky guessed that it was a dead end.
A block away, he’d passed both a convenience store and a cheap liquor store. He turned, leaving his quarry, and headed in that direction. He slid one of his precious twenty-dollar bills from the lining of his coat, gripping it in his palm where it was immediately damp with sweat.
He went first to the liquor store. It was a small place, with advertised specials smeared in red paint on the front window. He stepped up and put his hand on the door to enter, only to find it locked. He looked up and saw a clerk sitting behind the register. He tried the door again, and it rattled. The clerk stared his direction, then suddenly bent forward and spoke into a microphone. A tinny voice came out of a speaker near the door.
“Get the hell out of here, yah old fuck, unless yah got some money.”
Ricky nodded. “I’ve got money,” he replied.
The clerk was a middle-aged paunchy man, probably close to his own age. Ricky saw, when he shifted position, that he wore a large pistol holstered on his belt.
“Yah got money? Sure. Let’s see it.”
Ricky held the twenty-dollar bill up. The man eyed it from his spot behind the register
“How’d you get that?” he said.
“I found it on the street,” Ricky answered.
The door buzzer went off, and Ricky pushed his way inside.
“Sure yah did,” the clerk said. “All right, you got two minutes. Whatcha want?”
“Bottle of wine,” Ricky said.
The clerk reached behind himself to a shelf and picked out a bottle. It wasn’t like any bottle of wine that Ricky had ever drunk before. It had a screw top and was labeled Silver Satin. It cost two dollars. Ricky nodded and handed over the twenty. The man put the bottle in a paper bag, opened the register, and removed a ten and two singles. He handed these to Ricky. “Hey!” Ricky said. “You owe me a couple more.”
Smiling nastily, placing a hand on the butt of his revolver, the clerk replied, “I think I gave you some credit the other day, old man. Just getting my previous kindness paid back.”
“You’re lying,” Ricky said angrily. “I’ve never been in here before.”
“You think we ought to really have an argument, you fucking bum?” The man clenched a fist and thrust it in Ricky’s face. Ricky stepped back. He stared hard at the clerk, who laughed at him. “I gave you some change. More ’n you deserve, too. Now beat it. Get the fuck out of here, before I kick you out. And if you make me walk around this counter, then I’m gonna take my bottle back and the change back and I’m gonna kick your ass in the process. So what’s it gonna be?”
Ricky moved slowly toward the door. He turned, trying to think of a proper rejoinder, only to have the clerk say, “What? What is it? You got some problem?”
Ricky shook his head and exited, clutching the bottle, hearing the clerk laugh behind his back.
He walked down the block to the convenience store. He was greeted there with the same, “You got some money?” demand. He showed the ten-dollar bill. Inside, he purchased a pack of the cheapest cigarettes he could find, a pair of Hostess Twinkies, a pair of Hostess Cup Cakes, and a small flashlight. The clerk in this store was a teenager, who threw the stuff into a plastic bag and said, “Nice dinner,” sarcastically.
Ricky walked back onto the sidewalk. Night had swept the area. Wan light from the stores that remained open carved small squares of brightness from the darkness. Ricky crossed back to the alley entrance. He dipped as quietly as he could just inside, putting his back up against a brick wall, and sliding down to sit and wait, all the time thinking he’d had no idea before this night how easy it was in this world to be hated.
It seemed as if the darkness slowly enveloped him in the same way that the heat during the summer day did. It was thick, syrupy, a blackness that reached within him. Ricky allowed a couple of hours to pass. He was in a semidream state, his imagination filled with pictures of who he was once, the people who had come into his life to destroy it, and the scheme he had to build to regain it. He would have been comforted, sitting with his back against the brick in the darkened alleyway in a section of a city that he was unfamiliar with, if he could have pictured his late wife, or perhaps a forgotten friend, or maybe even a memory of his own childhood, some mental picture of a happy moment, a Christmas morning, or a graduation day or perhaps wearing his first tuxedo to a high school prom, or the rehearsal dinner on the eve of his wedding. But all these moments seemed to belong to some other existence, and some other person. He had never been much for reincarnation, but it was
