children.
As they stretched the mottled blanket over him, preparing to settle it across his body, Morris saw the words “Mercy Hospital Morgue” stamped in black on one corner.
Sheets from the hospital?
The cloth settled over him with a whisper, wrinkled hands smoothing and spreading it on each side. His limbs were weak, his mouth slack, as if the blanket had sapped the last of his strength. Though his skin was clammy, sweat oozed from his pores like newly hatched maggots crawling from the soft meat of a corpse. He was being wrapped in fabric even colder than his soul.
Threads from the dead, from those who had lost hope.
Sheets that would give back all that had gone into them.
A handmade blanket stitched not in the attic of the heart but in the dark basement of the disappointed.
“The ambulance will be here in twenty minutes,” Faith said. “Until then, cherish the despair you deserve.”
She tugged the blanket up to his chin, and then, with a final, benevolent look into his frightened eyes, she drew it over his face.
Nothing Personal, But You Gotta Die
So you changed your name.
Not too smart. A name’s a personal thing, and you had to go messing with what your Momma gave you. What kind of thing is that? How do you expect anybody to respect you, after you go and do something like that?
Joey Scattione, he’s big time, don’t got nothing against you, not nothing personal. If it was up to him, just a slap on the cheek, you cry and say you’re sorry, we all go down to Luigi’s and eat pasta together, like in some Mafia movie. Whaddahell.
But this is business. And business means keeping your word. And standing up, playing it straight. But you hadda talk to Feds and the Feds can’t touch Joey, we all know that, Joey’s golden, but they get a little something on you, you lose your spine, your tongue starts running before your head turns the key, and all of a sudden we got a bad situation.
No, a person who would change his name would probably tell any kind of lie to save his own skin. It’s all about constitution. Some got it, some ain’t. Don’t feel bad about it. Better guys than you wilted when the heat came down. Changed your name and tried to skip town, all part of your constitution.
All perfectly understandable. But that don’t mean it’s forgivable.
We’ve known each other what-seven years? Why you got to go and not be Vincent any more? I liked Vincent, for the most part.
Aw, c’mon. Don’t start with this “Mikey, Mikey” stuff. Don’t make it worse by begging. You wilted once, but you got one last chance to go down standing. Don’t look at me that way, I got no choice, nothing personal, but you gotta die.
See, it’s all about choices. You change your name, try to become somebody different, but under the skin you’re still the same.
I mean, the feds and girls and guns, that’s all business stuff. Taking you out, that’s business. Listening to you beg, that’s business, too, sort of sad but, hey, you can’t change what’s under the skin.
It bugs me, you changing your name like that. Shows a lack of constitution.
Me, I stick with “Mikey.” There’s a billion Mikeys in Brooklyn, and I’m one of them. No better, no worse. That’s just part of my constitution.
The least you can do is take your name back. I’ll make it clean, one through the heart, the head, whatever you want. But you ought to do things right and go out under the name you was born with. What about it?
I mean, you don’t want to meet old St. Pete and tell him your name and he runs his finger down the list and no Vincent there, all them good deeds for nothing, just ‘cause you ain’t really Vincent no more. So he shakes his head and you got to slink away from the Pearly Gates and all because you got no spine.
So that’s the only thing personal about what I gotta do. This name business. It’s a lie, and I hate lies.
Whaddaya say?
Vincent. Don’t go with the crying. It ain’t in character. Not like you at all.
Sorry, Vincent.
Open your eyes.
See, I lied.
This is personal.
And my name’s not really Mikey.
It’s Vincent now. Yeah, your name. I may as well take it, since you won’t be needin’ it no more, and Joey got a thing for me, too.
You kind of look a little like me, too, and by the time your bones float up in the harbor, you’ll be wax and cottage cheese. With my I.D. in your wallet.
So you don’t like Vincent, you can be Mikey, and Mikey’s dead, and I skip out as Vincent, and Joey’s none the wiser.
Everybody lives happy ever after.
Oh.
Except you.
Like I said, it’s nothing personal.
Tell St. Pete Vincent says hello.
WATERMELON
Ricky bought the watermelon on a warm Saturday afternoon in September.
The early crop had arrived at the local grocer’s in late June, fresh from California, but the available specimens were hard and heartless. Ricky had decided to wait for a Deep South watermelon, and those traditionally arrived many weeks after the annual Fourth of July slaughter. Besides, that was early summer. He had yet to read about the murder and his home life with Maybelle was in a state of uneasy truce.
But now it was the last day of summer, a definite end of something and the beginning of something else. The watermelon was beautiful. It was perfectly symmetrical, robust, its green stripes running in tigerlike rhythms along the curving sides. A little bit of vine curled from one end like the cute tail of a pig. He tapped it and elicited a meaty, liquid thump.
It was heavy, maybe ten pounds, and Ricky brought it from the bin as carefully as if it were an infant. His wife had given him a neatly penned list of thirteen items, most of them for her personal use. But his arms were full, and he didn’t care to trudge through the health-and-beauty section, and he had no appetite for Hostess cupcakes and frozen waffles. Sheryl Crowe was singing a bright ditty of sun and optimism over the loudspeakers, music designed to lobotomize potential consumers. Ricky made a straight path to the checkout counter and placed the watermelon gently on the conveyor belt.
Now that his hands were free, he could pick up one of the regional dailies. The front page confined the woman’s picture to a small square on the left. Her killer, the man who had sworn to love and honor until death did them part, merited a feature photograph three columns wide, obviously the star of the show and the most interesting part of the story.
“That’s sickening, isn’t it?” came a voice behind him.
Ricky laid the newspaper on the belt so the cashier could ring it up. He turned to the person who had spoken, a short man with sad eyes and a sparse mustache, a man who had never considered violence of any kind toward his own wife.
“They say he was perfectly normal,” Ricky said. He wasn’t the kind for small talk with strangers, but the topic interested him. “The kind of man who coached Little League and attended church regularly. The kind the neighbors said they never would have suspected.”
