“You paying attention now?”
I took a breath, closed my eyes. “Okay, okay, I’m listening.”
“Reg’s house. One hour. Don’t make us come get you.”
I was able to say, “Wait, listen,” before I heard the dial tone that told me Zod had hung up.
BY THE TIME I turned onto Genesee Street, I’d run through all my options six times each. There weren’t that many to consider.
I could ignore Zod’s call and his summons to Reg’s house. It was the easiest answer, and it would send a clear message.
Any normal person would understand.
And that was the problem.
Zod would get the message, then he’d deliver one of his own. He knew where I lived, knew how to get in, and I had no doubt that Zod would pay a visit, probably when I was the only one at home, but you couldn’t bet on that, either, not with a psycho.
I thought about explaining the situation to my parents. I could tell them that I was sorry, that I’d made a mistake or two, and now this guy from my past was back, and I didn’t know what to do, and, boy, I really needed their help.
No way.
Their help had gotten me to a point in my life where I needed a list to get me out of it. You could say that it was the way they raised me that gave me the confidence I needed to reinvent myself, but I ain’t buying it. Their hands-off parenting style wasn’t part of some master plan to make us better adults. It was simply the least they had to do until we could fend for ourselves and get out of their hair. Maybe it was the way their parents raised them, I don’t know, but I did know that asking them for help was something I wasn’t going to do. Running drugs for Zod, sure. Running to Mommy and Daddy, no way. Pretty sad when you think about it.
So, no, my parents could not know.
For a second or two, I thought about telling Jay and Dan-O and the guys, see if they’d back me up, but I knew I wouldn’t ask and that they’d only laugh if I did. We barely stood up for each other in the best of times. Now? They’d line up to see me get beat down.
Karla would’ve listened. She wouldn’t have laughed or given me worthless advice. She probably would have told me what I knew already, but she would have listened.
Other options—like telling a teacher or calling one of those counseling lines—weren’t worth the second it took to dismiss them.
I thought about my list. Stand up and stand fast seemed to fit the situation. Stand up to Zod and refuse to play his game, then stand fast to that decision. It’s what the warlord of Bimskala would do. Then again, he had a sword and a laser pistol. And a princess.
I pulled up in front of Reg’s house, still thinking about my list. Had following it brought me here, or would I have ended up here anyway, in a situation no list was going to get me out of?
It was deep in the winter afternoon, and the streetlights were already on. Somebody had busted out the bulb in the light in front of the house, making the walkway and porch that much darker. The flickering blue glow of the TV back-lit the bed sheet that served as a curtain. I knocked just loud enough to be heard. A few seconds later the two deadbolts clicked back, the chain came off, and the door swung open.
Zod grinned. “I told you he’d show.”
Someone shouted, “Shut the damn door. It’s freezing out there.” And then I was inside.
Cory was on the couch, one hand in a bag of potato chips, the other around a skinny blond chick, both of them snuggled up under a tartan blanket, watching a rerun of Gilligan’s Island. At one end of the table was a pudgy lump with a weak mustache who kept his eyes glued to the TV across the room. At the other end sat a black guy, older than the rest, his Jheri curl glistening under the hanging lamp.
And there was Reg, cigarette in his mouth, arm flung across the back of the chair, looking right at me.
There was no sign of Dawn.
Zod slapped me on the shoulder, then strode past to take the last seat at the table, smiling like he knew what was coming.
I walked over, burying my hands in the pockets of my jean jacket so they wouldn’t see them shake. I stood near Zod and kept the front door right behind me. The black guy gave me half a glance, then went back to the magazine he was reading. The pudgy guy stayed with the TV castaways.
I tried to keep my eyes on the center of the table, at the deck of cards that Dawn had dealt in my dream, but I could feel the stare, and when I looked up, Reg locked on and said, “What’s this you gave Steve the snow?”
It didn’t click at first, and I could feel my mouth slowly dropping open as my brain raced to translate Steve into Zod, snow into cocaine. I managed a faint “Yeah,” then a second later, “I gave it to him.”
Reg held my stare. “You don’t trust my product?”
“No,” I said, catching myself as I said it. “I mean yes. Yes, I . . . I trust it. The, uh, product.”
“So why you giving it away?”
It was a simple question, the kind anybody with any sense would’ve asked. The answer? That wasn’t so simple. And it wouldn’t have made any sense to the guys at the table. But as I felt the sweat start to bead on my lip, and my knee began to twitch, the only answer I could think of was the wrong one. I heard myself say it anyway. “I’m not into drugs.”
No reaction.
No snickering, no mumbled bullshits.
Nothing.
I blinked, shuffled my feet. Reg kept staring.
“Your friends say you don’t cut ’em any slack at the Stop-N-Go. Make ’em pay every time. Full price. Even a bag of ice. That true?”
Friends? I shrugged. “I guess.”
“You guess?” Reg dropped an open hand on the table. “I don’t want you guessing. Do you make your friends pay, yes or no?”
“Yes,” I said. “They have to pay.”
“But you don’t pay, do you? You take whatever you want,” Reg said, counting off on his fingers. “Beer. Cigarettes. Ice.”
The black guy chuckled at that, but Reg’s expression didn’t change.
“No, I don’t take anything.”
“You take money from the till, though, right? Ten bucks here, twenty there . . .”
“No,” I said. “Nothing.”
“Not even once?”
“No. Never.”
Reg slapped the table—hard this time—and leaned forward, his eyes on fire. “Why the hell not?”
The room was quiet. I realized that the TV was off, nobody moving, all of them watching me, waiting.
“Do you think you’ll get caught? Is that why you don’t steal?”
I wet my lips, swallowed, shook my head. What did they want me to say?
The short lumpy guy turned. “The man asked you a quest—”
Reg’s arm swung up, catching the guy on the cheek, rocking his head back, Reg never taking his eyes off me. “I’m gonna ask you one more time,” Reg said. “Why don’t you steal from that shithole store?”
I tried, but there was nothing in my head but the stupid, lame, pansy-ass truth. I cleared my throat and said, “It doesn’t belong to me.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said it doesn’t belong to me.”
“So just because it doesn’t belong to you,” Reg said, the others all laughing at his imitation of my mumbling, “you think you shouldn’t take any of it.”
“Yeah.”
“And because you don’t steal, you don’t let anybody else steal either, is that right?”
“That’s right,” I said, quicker now, guessing that it didn’t matter anymore.
Reg narrowed his eyes. “You telling me I come in that store, I steal something, you’re gonna stop me?”
Silence.
Time stopping.
And in that silence, in that frozen moment, a realization.
They were all holding their breath.
They were waiting.
Not for Reg.
For me.
Waiting for me to break.
I didn’t know what would happen next, but in th
at instant I realized it was time to stand up.
“Hey, shithead,” Reg said. “I asked you if you think you would—”
“Yes,” I said. “I’d stop you.”
Reg smirked. “Just how you gonna stop me from taking what I want?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I would.”
All eyes were on Reg now as he leaned back in the chair.
Then he laughed.
They all laughed.
Not at me.
With me.
“I told you,” Zod said.
“We’ll see,” Reg said, still smiling, still looking at me. “Get this kid a chair. We’re gonna have a talk.”
Thursday, December 29
I HATED GOING IN THE STORE WHEN I WASN’T WORKING. Any unpaid seconds in the place felt like punishment. But Thursday was payday and Saturday was New Year’s Eve, and I didn’t want to be caught short on cash for any of it, even if my only plan was not being home at midnight.
Jay’s parents always went out of town for New Year’s, so there’d be a blow-out party at his house. Last year they went through a half pound of weed, twenty cases of beer, and a big bottle of Wild Turkey that I helped kill. Months later, just the thought of doing shots made me nauseous. This year there’d be more of everything, but I’d sit alone in my own driveway, sipping hot chocolate at midnight, before I’d show up at Jay’s.
The road was clear and the potholes were easy to see. There were too many to avoid, but at least I could pick the ones I’d hit, keeping the frame-shaking, eight-track-popping jolts to a minimum. The car didn’t drift to the right like it did when Karla drove it, so there was no need for sudden jerks of the wheel, and the muffler was making some noise, but that was easily fixed by cranking up the stereo. It was the Ramones—I taped the album over an old Genesis eight-track—and it was loud and hard and fast and exactly what I needed to wake up my morning.
I pulled into the parking lot and took a spot near the door. Employees were supposed to park at the far end of the lot, saving the close spaces for customers, but I wasn’t there to work, and Penelope was so happy to see me, she wouldn’t have cared if I parked sideways in the lone handicapped spot.
“Look who came to visit,” Penelope said, scurrying out from behind the counter, standing on her toes to give me a hug. “How’s my favorite stock boy?”
“Stock man,” I said, hugging back.
It was impossible not to like Penelope Robinson. She was everyone’s grandmother, cool aunt, and favorite teacher, all in one pint-size package. I only saw her on the rare times our shifts bumped together, but she still treated me like her favorite person in the whole world, just like she treated most people who came in the door.
“I know you’re not going to break my heart and tell me you’re only here for your check.”
I overacted a shocked expression. “You mean it’s payday? Already?”
“Don’t get too excited, stock man. There’s no holiday money in that check. Only straight pay, no time-and-a-half.” She stepped back behind the counter and popped open the register, lifted out the cash drawer with one hand, and took out a thin stack of white envelopes with the other, handing them to me. “Yours is near the top.”
I took the envelope with my name on it and gave her back the rest. Inside there’d be a check for $24.77. Less than the street value of the short line of coke Reg had snorted off the tabletop.
“So tell me,” Penelope said, pinching my arm as she said it. “Who is this raven-haired beauty who came looking for your phone number?”
My head snapped up.
“Oh, so you do know her,” she said. “Pretty, in a tough kind of way. Looks like that biker girl on Happy Days.”
I stuffed the envelope in my jeans, trying hard to play it smooth. “What’d she say?”
“What do you think she said? She wanted your phone number.”
“Did you give it to her?”
Penelope shook her head and made that tsk-ing sound. “Now, Nicky, you know very well the rules don’t allow us to share any personal information with customers. Even attractive ones.”
“So you didn’t give it to her?”
“I’m sorry, dear. Mr. Starks was standing right here, and you know what he would have done if he saw me going through the employee phone list with a customer.”
I looked up at the ceiling. I didn’t think I could ever be pissed at Penelope, but I felt it coming. I closed my eyes and started counting.
“The rules are very clear about giving out phone numbers,” she was saying. “Funny, though, they don’t say anything at all about getting phone numbers.”
I opened my eyes and there was Penelope, waving a folded slip of paper between two tiny fingers.
I STUCK A STRAW in my Pepsi and watched as Dawn emptied a fourth pack of sugar and a third creamer into the small Buckman’s Donuts mug. “You told me you liked coffee,” I said.
“I do.”
“How can you taste it with all the other stuff in there?”
“I like my coffee like I like my men,” she said. “Hot, sweet, and tan.” She reached over and pushed up the sleeve of my sweatshirt, my pale, winter skin looking whiter against the black fabric. She smiled at me. “Well, two outta three . . .”
I waited a moment, just in case she wanted to say more, but she didn’t, so I said, “I suppose you heard all about my little meeting with King Reg.”
“I heard their side of it. Tell me yours.”
I shrugged. “Got a call from Zod—”
“Aka Little Stevie Zodarecky.”
“—and he said Reg wanted to see me. So I went. They were all sitting around—”
“Who?”
“Zod . . . or Steve. Whatever. Reg, of course. Cory. Some blond chick—”
“Charlene,” Dawn said, trying and failing to capture a Texas drawl. “She works at the Klassy Kat. It was love at first pole dance.” She sipped at her coffee. “Was Lester there?”
“Brother with the Jheri curl? Yeah, he was there. Didn’t say much.”
“He never does.”
“Oh, and there was another guy. White, short, looks like he’s trying to grow a mustache?”
Dawn made a face. “Freddie. He’s the runner.”
“Him?”
“Not running runner,” she said, a laugh in her voice. “He’s like an errand boy. He picks up the goods or drops off the cash. Keeps Reg one step removed from the actual deal.”
“He looked a little . . .”
“Pathetic? Weak? Ball-less?”
I smiled. “Yeah. One of those.”
“He is,” she said. “That’s why they picked him. They think he’s a wuss, so he’ll never try anything stupid. I don’t trust the guy. I think that whole thing is an act. But Reg thinks he’s okay, so it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. Freddie hasn’t pocketed anything yet. But, oh boy, if he ever did . . .” She shook her head and went back to her coffee.
I thought about Freddie, the dull look in his eyes as he watched Gilligan’s Island, Reg smacking his face for talking out of turn, how the guy just took it, backing down like a nervous puppy. It didn’t seem like an act to me.
“Anyway,” Dawn said. “How did Reg bring it up?”
“He started asking me about my job—was it true I didn’t steal stuff, that I wouldn’t let my friends steal anything.”
“You let me get away.”
“We weren’t friends then.”
She grinned. “Go on.”
“Then he says, ‘What if I tried to steal something?’ and I told him I’d have to stop him. Or try to, anyway.”
“I’m sure he liked that.”
“It’s funny, I think he did.” I stabbed the straw through the ice to the bottom of the glass. “That’s when he offered me a job.”
“What kind of job?”
“He didn’t say. Just said he was looking for someone he could trust.”
Dawn added another packet of sugar to her coffee, stirring it in a
s she thought.
“Maybe he’s looking for somebody to sell at my school,” I said.
“No, Steve handles that stuff. And people below his level never meet Reg. He thinks it’ll protect him if one of them gets busted.”
“Would it?”
“Probably. It’ll take a lot more than a nickel-bag sale to get him locked up.”
I looked at her. “You sound disappointed?”
Her smile twitched. She drew in a deep breath, paused, started to say something, and stopped. She took a sip of her coffee and propped her chin in her hand. “Anyway, this job offer. They said you’re thinking it over.”
I shook my head. “I told them I didn’t want anything to do with them or their drugs or their money, and that they should leave me alone and stay the hell away.”
“You said that?”
“Not those words, no. But they got the idea.”
“No, they didn’t. What they heard was that you’re thinking it over.”
“Well, I’m not, so they can forget it.”
“They won’t,” Dawn said. “Once they get an idea in their little heads, they don’t let it go. And right now, that idea is that you’re going to be working for Reg.”
“And if I say no?”
“They’ll hear yes.”
“I guess I’ll worry about that when it happens,” I said, knowing that I was already worrying about it.
“That’s what I said.” She took a pack of Virginia Slims from her purse and pulled a cigarette out with her lips. “Then it happened.”
“You work for him?”
She sparked a BIC lighter and lit the cigarette, took a long drag. “I told you, I needed money. Well, technically Terri needed the money, and since my mother never did the paperwork and since it wasn’t ‘critical’ or ‘covered,’ and because ‘Rules are rules’ and ‘We can’t make an exception,’ I needed eighteen hundred upfront, fast. Who’s got money like that laying around? A friend of a friend introduced me to Reg. I was going to do his books, keep track of the money. No drugs, not even the cash, just the accounting. He paid good, I’ll give him that. Then the job changed. Now Lester gets paid for doing the books. And I get paid for doing Reg.”
I kept my eyes on my Pepsi, but I could feel her looking at me.
Snow Job Page 11
