went by. Messer eyed every one.
“Can I help you?”
Eddie turned and saw a little Asian girl-Korean, he supposed: hadn’t he read somewhere about the coming of Korean shopkeepers? — gazing up at him. He remembered the olive-skinned girl in the dancing shoes at the bus station down south; and the water snakes: “O happy living things.”
“I’m just looking,” Eddie said.
“We’ve got some nice iris.” She brandished purple petals at him. “Special-five dollars a dozen.” An old woman watched from behind the cash register.
“I’ll take a dozen,” said Eddie.
The girl withdrew. Eddie looked out the window. Messer was pacing now. The Kwik ’n Brite clock read 5:11. The woman with the leashed mongrel came by, going the other way. The dog sniffed the still-damp stain on the wall, pissed again. The girl returned with a bouquet.
“How about these?”
“Fine.”
She left, busied herself with wrapping paper. The door of 719 opened and the young man came out, red- faced, with a plastic shopping bag. The unleashed mongrel appeared, sniffed, pissed. Messer checked his watch. The Kwik ’n Brite clock read 5:20. Messer kept pacing.
Rain fell harder. The old Korean woman went outside, began bringing in the flowers. The girl left her wrapping to help. A passing car splashed Messer’s shoes. Messer said, “Shit.” Eddie couldn’t hear him, but he could read his lips.
At 5:29 the Korean girl said, “Here you go, mister,” and handed Eddie the bouquet wrapped in green paper. As he took it, Eddie saw an empty taxi come up the street. Messer saw it too. It was almost past him when his arm shot up. The taxi stopped. Messer got in. The taxi drove off. Eddie ran into the street. The old Korean woman ran after him.
“Fi dollar,” she cried. “Fi dollar.”
23
One door down from the Korean flower shop stood the Cafe Bucharest. The table in its front window commanded a good view of Kwik ’n Brite Dry Cleaners and 719: Adult Books, Mags, Videos, Peeps. Eddie sat at the window table, checking out the posters on the walls of the Cafe Bucharest-rugged mountains, green valleys, crumbling castles, Bela Lugosi as Dracula-and drinking a steaming cup of espresso. His first espresso; Eddie didn’t like it much. He kept his eye on 719 and resisted the urge to buy cigarettes.
Night fell. The rain slanted down out of the darkness, shimmered through the yellow cones of street light, disappeared. Not a good night for the pornography business. In an hour, three customers-all of them male, all of them alone-entered 719. One came out with a plastic shopping bag, the others empty-handed.
Eddie ate a thick sandwich of roast beef on black bread, served with a strange orange pickle, and imagined he was getting the feeling of Bucharest. A cigarette, unfiltered, Turkish, would make it perfect. Brightly colored packs of them all with foreign names, were displayed beside the cash register. Eddie ordered another cup of espresso instead.
“Some strudel?”
“No, thanks.” Desiccated pastries posing under that name were served in the cafeteria shared by E and F- Blocks every Sunday night.
Eddie began to like espresso. He was taking his last sip when a truck, rusty and dented, bearing the words “Simon Poultry Farms” on the side, parked in front of 719. The store’s neon sign flashed off, glowing dully for a few moments, then fading to darkness. Eddie rose, laid some money on the table.
The ponytailed man in the Harvard sweatshirt came out, rolled down a steel door that covered the entire front of the store, locked it in place. Then he climbed into the truck on the passenger side and started arguing with the driver. Eddie left the Cafe Bucharest.
The truck pulled into traffic, headed down Fourteenth Street. Eddie followed, first walking on the sidewalk, then running on the road, as though connected to the truck by an unseen force. The truck picked up speed. It had an unroofed cargo space, surrounded by slatted wooden sections about five feet high. Running at full speed, Eddie caught up to it and leaped, grabbing the top of one of the wooden sections.
He hauled himself up. A slat cracked under his weight. Eddie got his feet on the edge of the steel platform and vaulted over. The slat snapped. He lost his balance and landed hard on stacks of wire cages, knocking some loose. Chickens began squawking all around him.
The truck swerved to the side of the road, skidded to a halt. Eddie crawled over the cages, dropped into a small space against the back of the cab. He lay down in it. A chicken pecked his hand through the wire.
Eddie heard one of the doors of the cab open. Then came a grunt of effort, followed by the sight of the ponytailed man leaning over the side, squinting into the back of the truck. If he had glanced straight down, he might have seen Eddie, but he did not.
Eddie heard the driver call,
“The fucking
At that moment there was a tremendous burst of rain. “Fuck the fucking
Julio ducked out of sight. The door slammed shut. The truck jerked back out into the street.
Rain lashed down on Eddie and the chickens. The chickens went quiet. Eddie felt around for a tarpaulin. Wasn’t there always a tarpaulin in the back of a truck? Not in this one. He sat huddled between the cab and the cages. Rain swept down, cold and hard. Eddie bounced around on wet steel. None of that bothered him. The espresso was still warm inside him, and if he tilted his head back he had a wonderful view of skyscrapers rising into the night. It reminded him of a line from his reading: “Alps on Alps arise.” That was the city of Karen de Vere, champagne and Armagnac. He lost his enthusiasm for the view.
The rain stopped abruptly; the skyscrapers vanished. They were in a tunnel. The chickens shifted nervously. Newspaper rustled on the floors of their cages. Eddie made a clicking sound. It failed to soothe the chickens. He was struck with the mad idea of opening the cages and letting them all out.
Then he was back in the rain. The truck swung onto a ramp, halted soon after at a toll booth, then sped off on a turnpike under sodium-orange skies. The rain stung. Eddie got his back against the cab, hunching below the window; the chickens tucked their heads under their wings and endured. They all did it, even though the only ones getting wet were in the top row.
The truck seemed to be heading south. Eddie confronted the possibility that while there had to be a connection between Dr. Messer, Senor Paz, El Rojo, and the hundred-dollar bill, the ponytailed man might have nothing to do with it. Why would he, especially since Messer hadn’t even entered 719? Maybe it was only the outside of 719 that mattered. Julio could be on his way home to the wife and kids, or to a bowling alley, or, more probably, to a second job at a meat packer’s. A beer can flew out of the cab, and then another.
Eddie was soaked and shivering by the time the truck left the turnpike. They followed a two-lane road, going more slowly now. The sky lost its orange glow, went black. The only light came from headlight beams that flashed from time to time across the cages. Eddie caught glimpses of the chickens; they appeared headless, as they soon might be. More beer cans flew by, faint whizzing shadows in the night.
Time passed, how much time Eddie didn’t know. His watch was on Prof’s wrist, locked up in F-Block. Eddie was wet, cold, unsure; but free, and therefore happy, right?
The truck slowed, down to a speed where Eddie could have jumped off safely. He considered it, and was still considering it when they turned onto a dirt road and bumped through a wooded flatland. The trees stretched overhead, catching some of the rain. Under their shelter, the chickens came to life, shifting around in their cages, nervous again. Just like inmates: catatonic when things were at their worst; agitation always following slight improvements.
They were alone on the dirt road. Five or six miles passed before the truck came to a stop. Eddie rose, peered over the side. The headlights shone on a fence, not especially high but made of barbed wire, stretching out
