“I don’t have that,” Elgin said. “I shot a defenseless man. That’s the long and the short of it, and that’s a sin.”
And he was right:
In the world, ’case you haven’t noticed, you usually pay for your sins.
And in the South, always.
ICU
This woman, Carrie, regular in the bar, she says to him, “There was a guy around asking about you.”
Daniel turns on his stool. He catches the reflection of one of his eyebrows in her iris, and it bothers him, makes him feel as if it’s trapped in there and she might not give it back.
He says, “What guy?”
She shrugs, taking his eyebrow with her as she turns back to her vodka-n-whatever. “Some guy. He was in earlier. Wore a tie and everything. I asked him if he sold cars.”
“Did he?”
“He said no, but guys, you know? Lie about a fucking hangover they’re puking in the sink. This guy once, right? Calls me Doreen, okay? Doreen. Shit…”
She rattles her ice cubes. She takes a hit off her cigarette.
He waits for more but she juts her head forward and bulges her eyes to get the bartender’s attention.
He says, “So this guy who didn’t sell cars…”
She nods several times, quick, but she’s nodding at the bartender and she says, “’Nother, hon’, thanks.” She turns toward him, blowing smoke. “Your name’s Donnie, right?”
“Daniel.”
“Danny, I got to tell you, this guy? He said I should stay the fuck away from you.”
He doesn’t know how to respond to this. He’s never bothered this woman. Barely spoken to her. She’s a regular, he’s a regular. He’s bought her a drink or two. (Once, yeah, back in December when they were the only two in the place the entire night, he bought her four and danced with her once, the jukebox playing “You Got My Sugar but I Got You, Sweet” as the snow fell like cotton swabs outside the high green windows. Then the bartender said closing time and Daniel asked her if she was okay to drive and she laughed and the sound of it was like a bird screeching above the ocean and she slapped both hands on his chest and said, “Yeah, I’m fine, sweetie. You go on home.”)
He says, “Why?”
“Why what?” Lifting her drink to toast the bartender for bringing it.
“Why stay the fuck away?”
She shrugs. “I dunno. But he meant it.”
“But you never met him before.”
“So?”
“So why trust his opinion?”
She looks at him.
It’s his nose in her iris this time, the tip of it, bobbing.
“Tim,” she calls.
Tim is the bartender. He makes his way over, leans his elbow by her glass, eyebrows up. Tim likes no one. Tim has a single red tattoo on his right forearm. It’s covered in hair and faded. A flower with a broken stem and the word good-bye underneath it. Tim is the kind of guy Daniel doesn’t understand with awe.
Tim says, “What?”
Carrie says, “This guy’s bothering me.”
HE GOES TO one of his other bars. He tries to tell the bartender about Carrie, her crazy story, her getting him ejected, but the bartender’s got glasses to wipe.
It’s a younger crowd in here, noisier, but he finds a corner seat and watches the TVs. Basketball on one, bombs on the others. Roofs and streets of the ancient city lit up like a thousand tongues, licking the sky, afire. A yellow ticker running below it all that Daniel finds gorgeous and absurd. The world needs a yellow ticker, he is pretty sure. Just to keep score. Just to rid it of things of the nonticker variety. She was here… CNN… She’s not… FOX NEWS… Two kids… CSPAN… Die alone… MSNBC…
A guy he knows, gin-n-tonic-hates-his-job-curly-amber-hair sits beside him and sighs. “Time was you didn’t have to wait for a toilet in this place.”
Daniel says, “Saturdays.”
“Time was…,” the guy says.
On the TV, something blows up, breathless and huge.
“Time was…,” the guy says.
Guy’s got two feet of bar in front of him, he keeps missing it with his elbow. His hair is dark with sweat.
Daniel stares up at the TV, wondering if the guy will face-plant.
Another tongue goes afire. A man with a microphone and a beige safari jacket with a shitload of pockets blocks the flaming tongue. He looks somber. Respectful.
Daniel wonders where they sell those jackets.
Guy beside him snores.
Bartender leans in and says, “Two guys in here earlier?”
“Yeah?”
Bartender turns his chin, yawns into his fist. He reaches down for a bottle of peach schnapps. “Looking for you.”
“What?”
Bartender looks at him. “Wore ties and everything.”
Daniel’s boss says, “Now don’t cry.”
Daniel says, “I’m not crying.”
“Well, you are.”
“I’m sorry.”
His boss says, “I’m sorry. Jesus Christ. It’s just, you know, the times. It’s just, you know, the fucking economy. Your COBRA, though? That’s good another, like, nine months.”
Daniel says, “I’ve worked here for—”
“Don’t, all right?” His boss hands a box of tissues across the desk.
“They came to the house,” his ex-wife says.
“When?”
His ex-wife says, “I can’t let the boys go with you.”
He says, “What?”
His ex-wife says, “I just can’t. They asked all these questions.”
His ex-wife looks at him, love or pity trapped behind her skin, her bones, those eyes.
“They?”
Love, he thinks. Today, we’ll say it’s love.
She nods. “There were three of them.”
The man approaches Daniel in the express self-checkout aisle. Daniel runs a container of half-and-half over the red laser-light scanner and watches the price appear on the screen in front of him. He’s just realized that a sudden-impulse People buy tips the total of his items to thirteen, one over the limit, and he hopes that the scanner won’t sound an alarm, cancel the whole transaction, alert the management, the line of customers behind him. He looks over his shoulder and the man is standing next to him. Wool scarf over a suede jacket and a dark polo shirt. Lean. A sweep of brown hair hanging over his forehead, so perfectly sharp you could crease a sheet with it.
“How you doing?” the man says.
“Fine.” Daniel waves a box of Rice-A-Roni over the red beam.
“Hell of a news day,” the man says.
“Yeah?” Daniel tries to look distracted by his open plastic bag in its metal bin.
“Oh, sure.”
Daniel places a head of lettuce on the scanner. He faces the screen and selects “produce.” He enters “lettuce” on the screen that follows that one. The price appears in bold and is added to his subtotal.
“Seems a high price,” the man says.
Daniel scans a half gallon of skim milk.
“For lettuce,” the man says.
In the parking lot, the man right behind him, Daniel wonders if he should walk to his own car or loiter by someone else’s.
The guy says, “Daniel.”
Daniel stops, looks back at the man with his nice clothes, his L.A.-white teeth, his lack of groceries.
The man puts his hands in his pockets and leans back on his heels. Daniel can’t think of anything to say. The man’s eyes are the clear and the bright of skyscraper panes.
The man looks down at his shoes and gives them a small smile, as if surprised they still cover his feet, as if conferring with them about how they got there.
He looks back at Daniel, and the small smile holds.
The man says, “That’s your car, right?”