His thoughts kept him awake for the better part of those nights and when morning came, he knew he had to think really hard. Make a plan. Time to move on.
* * * *
His first paycheck was more than he’d expected—Igor was generous—and he bought minutes for his phone, boots, a new pair of jeans and t-shirts. He had some money left over, a nice chunk even, but he had gone out to the race tracks and played some Texas-hold’em down at the Sunland Park, and he shouldn’t have done that, knew it the moment he got in the car. And at the end of the day he was back to zero, right where he had started.
Brady was about to lock up for the night when the glass door swooshed open and the kid from the Mustang walked in. A memory the shape of a dent in his Bronco flashed. Brady pretended to straighten the cigarette lighter display on the counter. The kid disappeared between towers of beer and display cases and aisle shelves just to return with a six-pack of Budweiser and a bag of chips.
“Hey, shorty, what’s up?”
The kid’s voice was soft, not unlike his own. Brady stared at him, mumbling something, then began ringing up the beer and chips.
“Where’s the big guy? The owner, your boss, whatever … I need to talk to him.”
Outside, the parking lot was deserted but for the kid’s Mustang.
“What about?” Brady asked. “Maybe I can help?”
“I don’t need to talk to you. Where is he?”
The old rage, there it was. What Brady wanted—if he could have it his way—what he wanted was the kid to make a wrong move, say the wrong word. He wanted to pound his face, feel bones crack …. He caught himself, remembered to keep calm, hoped the kid wouldn’t insist on talking to Igor, would just leave with his kid beer and his kid bag of chips.
“Why don’t you tell me, maybe I can help you?” The radio was scratchy, stuck between two stations, aggravating him.
“Last week, you were out of my favorite beer,” the kid said in that snarky way, his lip pulled up on one side. “The bathroom always looks like shit and your donuts are stale. And if that isn’t bad enough, there’s no phonebook outside. I need to make a call and I can’t. Is that how you treat your customers? You don’t give a shit about your customers, do you?”
He gave a shit all right. But all the shits given didn’t change the fact that everything in life gets stolen, pissed on, torn up. The best intentions will end you up in deeper shit than you even thought possible. Nothing was ever enough. If every shelf was stocked and the bathroom was clean, the kid would have found another fault, another something to complain about. His hands twitched, calling on him to do what he did best: fight. Draw blood. He felt his fingers squeeze his thumb within the fist that had formed. He remembered his first fight, how he’d punched and almost broke his thumb and realized it needed to be on the outside curled between his first and second knuckles, kept tight, but also fluid. Powerful.
Time froze. There was the day he had asked a man in prison for a tattoo, he even remembered his name—they called him The Painter—and when he asked what kind of tattoo Brady wanted, he told him the face of a demon. The Painter paused with the needle suspended in midair, inches above his chest. “You’ll have to draw that for me. I don’t know what a demon looks like,” he had said and lowered his hand.
Brady had never been able to draw that demon. It wasn’t something that had a likeness in this world, maybe it was just the thing that bubbled inside of him, ready to strike. Brady looked down at his hands, warped, sunburnt, broken. His fist relaxed, opened up like the blossoms of a flower. He smiled; he had fought for composure and he had won.
“I’ll get the owner for you,” Brady said, forcing his voice to remain calm even though he felt the words tremble in his throat. He cocked his head to the right, pulling up the left side of his lips. The curtain beneath the counter hung in dusty and uneven folds.
“Hurry up. I ain’t got all day.”
“He doesn’t speak any English. He’s Russian,” Brady lied.
“Wait, wait. How do I tell him about my complaints? He speaks Spanish?”
“No.” Brady shook his head.
“How do you say that in Russian? How do you say ‘clean up the fucking bathroom?’” the kid asked.
“YA znayu ob etom cheloveke v morozilʹnuyu kameru,” Brady said.
“What? Yazanoo otretom chellovecce moro seal juno caeroo?” The kid tried, but got it all wrong.
“YA znayu ob etom cheloveke v morozilʹnuyu kameru,” Brady repeated.
They went back and forth another three or four times but finally the kid got it right. “YA znayu ob etom cheloveke v morozilʹnuyu kameru.”
Russian for I know about the man in the freezer.
“Igor?” Brady’s voice carried far into the back. “Igor?” Even louder.
Igor, reeking of cigar smoke, stepped behind the counter through the swinging door. He looked at Brady, then at the kid, puzzled.
“YA znayu ob etom cheloveke v morozilʹnuyu kameru.” The kid spoke slow and clear, remembering every syllable.
Igor stared at him in disbelief.
Brady nodded encouragingly at the kid, then took a couple of steps back.
“YA znayu ob etom cheloveke v morozilʹnuyu kameru,” the kid repeated, even slower this time.
Igor’s right hand parted the curtain below the counter. He reached blindly, never taking his eyes of the kid. He stood erect, balanced with his weight slightly forward, and pulled the trigger. Twice. The explosions occurred so quickly, they could have been one shot. The kid dropped without saying another word, a red shiny circle formed in the very middle of his chest. Two shots looked like one, that’s how accurate a shot Igor was. It wasn’t a through-and-through, there would be no clean up. The images that remained; the hue of the blood, the kid’s eyes staring off into nothing, the lighter display on the counter, the humming of the freezers, Igor’s breath coming in short spurts.
Igor hooked his large hands into the pits of the kid and pulled the body down the hallway. Brady reached for the kid’s car keys on the counter.
Out in the dark parking lot, the kid’s fiery Mustang patiently waited. Compared to the old Bronco it was a definite improvement. The engine started with a moan, grumbled, then settled down, like a horse’s quivering haunches as they rock forward. A sleek flaming beauty it was, with muscles hidden underneath the shiny coat draped majestically over its frame.
Brady rolled down the window to better hear the engine. He had a vision of thundering hooves splitting the silence of the night and he imagined himself galloping through the bleak concrete landscape. He stepped on the gas and rolled through the parking lot, recognizing the Mustang’s natural canter and gait. In his peripheral vision Brady watched Igor hit the master light switch. The gas station was closed.
One determined tap with the foot and the Mustang propelled forward, powering across the lot. He pulled into traffic without thinking of where to go and what to do next, but he knew he wasn’t going to stop for anything.
When Brady hit the highway, he felt free. His knuckles, white like river rocks, stretched through his skin. He relaxed his hands. A new beginning, maybe up north; he’d never been beyond Arkansas. He felt sad thinking about the kid on the ground, dead, by now next to the other man in the freezer. He tried not to think of his clouded eyes.
He tapped the gas and the Mustang roared. It did what horses do once allowed to roam free; it joyously neighed into the night.
THE LIFE OF THE PARTY, by Mark Pryor
The invitation arrives on my birthday, as it does almost every year. That fact is pure chance but the irony is not lost on me: an invitation to the annual Austin Mortician’s Party