“Reg know how old you are?”
“Drop it, Dale,” the fat man at the table said without turning, his eyes glued on the half-empty glass of bleach as the woman tapped in a pinch of white powder. At first it settled on the top, then clumps of grains broke away and floated down into the clear liquid, a white trail blooming as they dropped, clouding the bleach.
“It sure ain’t pure,” the fat man said.
“Never is,” the woman said. “I’d say this has been stepped on four times.” She poked at some grains on the table with a long, red fingernail. “Looks like they cut it with baking soda.”
“Or baby laxative.” The fat man ran a razor blade over a mirror, forming up a short thin line before bending over and snorting it up his nose in one jerky motion. He put his head back, sniffing hard. “I guess it’s good enough.”
The woman chopped at an aspirin-size pile, the razor blade clicking as it hit the glass. She looked at me. “Want a line?”
I shook my head. “No, thanks.”
She smiled, then held a nostril shut as she ran her nose over the coke, sucking it off the mirror.
“So, kid,” the fat man said. “Reg tell you how much?”
“He said you’d know.”
The fat man grinned. “I do.” He looked at the woman and gave her a nod that I wasn’t supposed to see or understand. But I saw it, and I had a good idea what it meant. And I was ready for it.
“Wait here, I’ll get the money,” the fat man said.
“I can get it for you,” Dale said, springing up from the couch. “It’s all counted out and everything.”
“No, you stay here, keep the kid company. Do a line if you want.” The fat man lumbered across the room and down a dark hallway.
Reg had told me it would be like this. “They don’t keep the cash in the living room,” he had said. “They got it in one of the bedrooms. So don’t get all freaked out when they go to get it.” Yet even though I knew what was happening, I couldn’t stop thinking that the fat man was busy loading a shotgun. Especially since it was taking so long.
Dale was back on the couch, sneezing and rubbing the end of his nose, when the fat man returned with a brown paper bag in one hand. “Here you go, kid,” he said, tossing me the package. It was thinner than a paperback, and lighter, the bag wrapped on both ends with red rubber bands.
I stood and walked over and set the bag on the table. Then I reached inside my coat and took out a large manila envelope and a black marker. I flicked open the envelope and put the package inside. I was about to lick the flap and seal the envelope when the fat man said, “What the hell is this?”
I lowered the envelope. “I seal the envelope, you sign the back across the flap, that way when I hand it to Reg, he knows I didn’t take anything out.”
Dale started to say something, but the fat man cut him off. “You thinking I shorted you? Is that it? You don’t trust me?”
“I trust you,” I said. “But Reg doesn’t trust me. I seal the envelope. You sign it. This way he can tell if it’s been opened. He wants to make sure that he’s getting exactly what you put in.” I raised the envelope again, taking my time as I prepared to lick the flap. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the woman frantically mouthing something.
“Whose idea is this?”
I shrugged. It was Dawn’s idea. She assumed they’d try to take advantage of me, but they didn’t need to know that. I stuck my tongue out and moved the envelope closer, waiting.
“Hold on a second,” the fat man said. “Did you say this was for Reg?”
“Yeah. Reg,” I said, letting it play out.
The fat man slapped himself on the forehead. “You hear that, Dale, this is Reg’s runner.”
“I told you when he got—”
“Shut up, Dale,” the fat man said. “You hear that, Meg? It’s Reg’s runner.”
“I heard you,” the woman said.
The fat man smiled. “Sorry, kid. Thought you were someone else. Give me that money. That’s, uh, for another guy. Reg’s money’s in the safe.”
I handed the man the package, and a few minutes later he was back, dropping the same paper bag—thicker and heavier now—into the envelope, sealing it himself, and signing the flap in big, sloppy cursive.
“Glad we got that straightened out,” the fat man said. “That could have been confusing.”
I stuffed the envelope inside my coat and zipped it up. “Yeah. I’d sure hate to have Reg mad at me.”
The fat man gave a nervous laugh. “You got that right.”
Tuesday, January 3
IT HAD BEEN THE LONGEST MONDAY OF MY LIFE. I slept good, though, and it was noon before I rolled out of my cot and climbed the basement steps to the kitchen.
I didn’t think anyone was home, but when I came out of the bathroom, I noticed my mother sitting in the corner of the kitchen, smoking a cigarette. There were two cups of coffee on the table, so that meant my sister was there too. I could hear her upstairs on the phone now, crying to somebody named Bret.
“About time you got up,” my mother said.
I grunted a greeting, then opened the fridge to survey my options.
“What time did you get in last night?”
“I don’t know. About one.” I moved the gallon of milk to the side, hoping to spot a slice of pizza.
“It was two forty,” she said. “I know because you woke us all up.”
“I was trying to be quiet. I didn’t expect a Barbie playhouse on the basement stairs.”
“Well, you should have looked. You know your nieces like to play there.”
I tried the freezer. Unknowns wrapped in aluminum foil, bags of frozen peas, a carton of Rocky Road ice cream, two empty ice trays, an open box of baking soda. I went with the ice cream.
My mother flicked the ash off her cigarette. “Why didn’t you turn on the light?”
There was only a little ice cream left, so I grabbed a spoon, stood by the sink, and ate it out of the carton. Between mouthfuls I said, “I was trying to be considerate.”
“If you were trying to be considerate, you’d come home at a decent hour.”
Another mouthful. “Something came up.”
“Oh, I’m sure it did. Just like something came up yesterday when you should have been at school? They called and left a message. It’s a good thing I erased it before your father got home.” She looked past me to the clock on the stove. “I assume they’ll be calling again today. You better hope your father isn’t here to answer it.”
I knew what would happen if my father heard that I had skipped school.
Nothing.
The family had been through it all before with my sisters. Back then, they had tried everything—punishments, behavior contracts, threats, bribes, counseling—none of it making the slightest difference. Those were rough years, filled with a lot of yelling and slammed doors and cop cars in the driveway. In the end, my sisters did what they wanted anyway. Eileen kept sleeping with Allen until she got knocked up and married, and Gail kept doing whatever.
So far my parents had had it pretty easy with me. The key, of course, was the unstated agreement that we would avoid each other as much as possible. There were the occasional parental-type questions—like now—but that was just for form’s sake. As long as there were no arguments or calls from the police station, I knew I could do what I wanted.
“You woke the girls, too. And they had to get up for school in the morning.”
I scraped the bottom of the carton. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to be even more considerate next time.”
“Why not just stay out till morning? If you’re at a friend’s place, sleep there.” She ground out her cigarette in the ashtray. “Or you can always sleep in your car.”
“It’s winter, Mom. It’s cold.”
“So get your sleeping bag out of the attic. You used to like to go camping. It’s the same thing. Probably even better.”
I rinsed out the empty carton. “I’m thinking maybe I might
move to Florida.”
She stopped and looked at me. “Florida?”
Hearing the word made me wonder too, but I kept it going. “Yeah. That’s sorta what I’m thinking.”
“Oh, really?” she said, the same voice she would’ve used if I said I was going to Harvard. “Why Florida?”
“It’s where Karla went,” I said. “I can stay with some of her friends until I get my own place.”
“And what are you going to do for money?”
“Karla works at the Del Mar Hotel and says she can get me a job. I could always work at a mini-mart. I have the experience.”
She swirled the cold coffee in her mug, watching it lap close to the brim. “So when are you thinking of doing this?”
Three hundred dollars a delivery, two or three deliveries a week, plus what I made at the Stop-N-Go, minus gas and expenses. If my luck held, we’d have enough money to leave by the middle of the month. And if my luck didn’t hold, I’d have a whole other set of things to worry about. “Two weeks,” I said. “Three, tops.”
“What about school?”
We both knew the answer to that. I was seventeen, and legally I could sign myself out anytime. Or simply stop going. That’s what my sister had done, and the world didn’t end. But I had a better answer.
“Karla’s enrolled in a night school program. I’ll sign up for the same thing. We’ll study together. We’ll have our GEDs by July.”
It didn’t matter that I made it all up—it was what she wanted to hear, especially the part about studying with Karla. She kept her eyes on the swirling coffee. “Sounds like you’re set on going.”
Was I? Even then I didn’t know for sure what I was going to do. But I nodded anyway. “Yeah. I am.”
After a few dead-quiet moments, my mother sighed and tapped another Winston out of the pack, lighting it with the BIC she kept on the table. “We’ll see.”
THE PHONE WAS ringing when I stepped out of the shower. No one picked it up, so that meant my mother and sister had left. I got to the phone just as the answering machine clicked on. I shouted a hello over my father’s monotone message.
After the beep, Zod said, “You know the Peppermill?”
Of course I knew the Peppermill. Open all night, free coffee refills, and killer pancakes. I’d been there a hundred times.
And yesterday morning, with Dawn.
An hour later I was there again, sitting across from Zod at the back of the empty smoking section, sipping a Pepsi and waiting on a cheeseburger.
Zod flicked open a Zippo lighter and fired up a Marlboro. “Any problems last night?”
Well, there was that gut-punching panic when I thought I was getting pulled over, almost getting ripped off by a fat hillbilly, the long ride home made longer by the old Genesis eight-track I had put in to calm my nerves, and then the cold wait on the dark porch with a bag-load of money as Reg took his time to let me in, but I didn’t feel like getting into details. “No. No problems.”
“Reg told me about the envelope. That was genius.”
“Thanks.”
“Seriously, dude. If Fat Sal would have shorted you, you would have gotten the blame. You know that, right?”
“I figured as much.”
“How much did Reg pay you?”
I took a sip of my Pepsi and thought fast. Was he looking for a cut? A commission for getting me the job? Maybe that was his angle, the reason he tracked me down in the first place. Maybe he was just curious. Or maybe he already knew. I went with the truth.
“I got three hundred,” I said.
His eyes went wide. “That it?”
“Yeah, just that.”
He shook his head as he looked at the ceiling. “No, no, no. That’s bullshit.”
“Honest,” I said. “That’s all he—”
“That cheap bastard. Three hundred? That’s bogus, dude.”
Three hundred dollars was more money than I had ever had at one time in my life. It would have taken me weeks to earn it at the Stop-N-Go, yet I made it in less time than I worked on a Friday night. It had seemed like a lot of money for nothing. Now I wasn’t so sure.
“You got any clue how much cash you had in that envelope?”
I shrugged. “A couple thousand?”
He laughed, then dropped his voice to a whisper. “Dude, you delivered a cutie. A quarter-frickin’-kilo.”
I shrugged again.
He leaned in. “There was twenty-two thousand in that envelope.”
I heard the number, and for a second it didn’t mean anything. Then the math part of my brain kicked in.
Twenty-two thousand dollars.
A new Camaro went for five grand.
My father made sixteen thousand a year at the factory.
In ’62, my parents had paid nineteen thousand for our house.
Twenty-two thousand dollars.
And it all fit in an oversize envelope that I had tossed on the floor of my car.
“Reg screwed you over,” he said. “He should have given you at least five hundred. You need to go back there and tell him you want more.”
I thought it through. “No,” I said. “I told him I’d do it for three hundred, and that’s what he paid me. If I wanted more, I should have asked for it then.”
“You took all the risk.”
“I knew that going in.”
“The higher-highers gave him three grand for that sale, you know that?”
“Oh, well. That’s business.”
He stared at me, a smile slowly growing. “I was right about you, dude.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I told Reg you were the real deal. Somebody he could trust. Smart, too. Plus, you got balls. But I told you that already. We go way back, dude, you know that?” He set his cigarette in the ashtray.
The way he moved, glancing around the room? Something was up.
“You got this coming,” he said as he reached behind his back, and in one quick move, he pulled out his wallet, reached over, and dropped a stack of twenties on my lap.
“You made me look good,” he said, taking up his cigarette. “I owe ya.”
I FOUND THE book in the exact same place it was last time I was at the public library. Not a lot of people checking out The Warlord of Bimskala.
My plan was to crash in the overstuffed chair over by the science books, kill a couple hours before I went back to the Peppermill to meet up with Dawn, but there was an old guy sleeping in that chair, so I settled for the window seat in the reference section that looked out to the parking lot. It wasn’t as comfortable and I could feel a draft, but the light was good and nobody came to this part of the library.
I flipped deep into the book, skimming for the big battle scene and the daring rescue of the black-haired princess. It was my favorite part, the one that always transported me to the far-off planet, putting the sword in my hand and the princess in my bed. I read the familiar words, waiting for them to work their magic and pull me in, but after five pages, nothing. Swords still slashed and heads still rolled in the Bimskalan dust, but somehow it wasn’t the same. The dialogue was way over the top and the whole plot was silly. Even the princess, with her “heaving bosoms” and “quivering thighs,” seemed ridiculous.
I looked at the cover. It was the same drawing that was on the paperback—sexy princess, paper-clip-thin straps on the metal bikini, lots of skin, lusty expression—but it was just a drawing.
It wasn’t working.
Dawn, standing at the foot of the bed, wearing a Cheap Trick T-shirt and skimpy red underwear?
Now that worked.
As for the warlord?
You didn’t need a sword to be somebody’s hero.
I thumbed the pages one last time, then closed the book.
WE SAT IN Dawn’s car in the lot near the picnic pavilions at a park, five miles from the Peppermill. I would have been happy staying at the restaurant, but Dawn thought it was too coincidental that Steve—and it was Steve now, “No m
ore of that stupid Zod stuff,” she’d said—had picked the same place earlier in the day.
The access roads through the woods were plowed, but it was cold, with a bitter wind. Ours were the only cars around. With the heat cranked, it was toasty warm in her little VW, and the drive-thru coffee steamed up the windows.
“If I had known it was going to be that much cocaine, I would have never let you do it.”
I eased the lid off my paper cup and balanced it on the narrow dashboard. “I don’t think the amount makes that much difference. Over a couple ounces it’s more or less all the same.”
“Crime-wise, yeah,” Dawn said. “It’s the people that get all crazy. You can’t trust them as it is. With that much coke on the table, forget it. That’s why I made you get the envelope. If they’re gonna rip someone off, at least make it a little harder.”
“I guess if they wanted it that bad, they could have just taken it from me.”
“No,” Dawn said. “If Reg thought it was them, he’d come looking for them. He may have slipped a bit with his brain half-fried, but he’s still dangerous.” She tapped another sugar into her cup. “Just ask Freddie.”
Neither Reg nor Steve had mentioned Freddie, and I hadn’t seen any hint of him at Reg’s place. Not like they would put up a “Freddie’s body is in the basement” sign.
“The guy in Lockport knows he can’t rip off Reg,” Dawn said. “Now, framing you for it? That he could do. And he tried it, too. He probably would have shorted you just enough to make it look suspicious. Reg has been doing business with him for years, so he’d give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Maybe. Like I said, you never know, when that much coke is involved.”
“So in a way, that envelope saved my life.”
Dawn shuddered. “Don’t put it like that. I hate that you’re doing it as it is.”
“If you can think of a better way to get the money . . .”
“I know. It’s just you’re the one taking all the risk, doing this for me—”
“I’m doing it for us,” I said, and it felt good saying it.
Right then I should have told her what it all meant to me, how it wasn’t just about moving to Florida but moving on with my life, becoming the guy I was pretending to be, and how I was more afraid of failing at that than anything Reg would ask me to do. But before I could say any of it, she said, “You know I can’t go without my sister.”
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