Our small evening rush came and went without major incident. We did walk most of our customers, however, as our pitches and counter-objections increasingly consisted of alcohol logic.
At one point McGinnes nudged me and walked up to the backs of a man and, judging from her magnificent, showcase ass, his extremely attractive companion.
“Fuck your wife for you today, sir?” McGinnes asked cheerfully, running the words tog Cthe="0em"›ether rapidly as if they were one.
“No thanks,” the man said, turning and smiling. “We’re just looking around.”
I had hoped that McGinnes would someday be caught in the act of this, his oldest and stupidest trick. It was his contention that people never listened to the salesman’s opening line, so anything could be said, so long as it had the proper speed and inflection. Often he’d pinch the cheek of a toddler and say to his proud parents, “Cute little cocksucker!” or wipe his brow on a summer day and to sympathetic customers tiredly proclaim, “Sure is cock today.” And always get away with it.
By eight o’clock the down had kicked in and brought to the forefront all the alcohol that had preceded it. McGinnes, who had begun bumping into displays and cackling at me from across the showroom, had fallen off what was for him a very wide ledge. It was plain now that both of us were on a violently twisted binge.
When it became obvious that a Japanese-American woman who had wandered in was not going to buy, McGinnes began substituting the r’ s in his words with l’ s, and the outraged woman, who probably had more class in her pinky finger than he had in his entirely moronic body, walked out in disbelief. We’d get a letter on that one in the office, and she’d get an apology, most likely from Louie.
A little later, an elderly woman came in and asked for McGinnes. I broke away from Lee up front and found him in the basement. He was walking down a row of stock, jamming his forefinger through the cardboard cartons with a scream, before stepping up to the next box and repeating the act. There was blood on the tip of his finger.
I left him in the basement and returned to the floor to help the woman. The false confidence gained from eyedrops and mints had equalized me, and I was doing quite well with her, explaining the features and benefits of a blender as if they were earth-shattering.
I was doing well, until I looked over her shoulder. Sporting an utterly absurd smile, McGinnes stood casually behind her, one arm leaning on the display rack, one foot crossed over the other like some cologne cowboy against a split-rail fence. His freckled dick drooped lazily out of his unzipped fly.
In the course of a few seconds, as she turned around to see what I was smirking at, the zipped-up McGinnes stepped forward to greet her. She walked out ten minutes later, receipt and blender in hand.
McGinnes followed me to the Sound Explosion and tried to slap me five. I pulled my hand away.
“There’s no way I’m going back on that floor with you tonight.”
“Easy, Jim,” he said and pointed to the front door. A skinny man in an L.L. Bean costume and his very plain, pregnant wife entered the store and approached the counter. He said something to Lee, she handed him the ice bucket, he nodded curtly, and he and his wife exited the store.
Evan Walters ran across Connecticut Avenue to beat the onrushing traffic and left his pregnant wife stranded on the median strip. From the east side of the street he impatiently waved her across.
“Piss-bucket,” McGinnes mumbled.
In the last hour of work few customers came in. Those who did left quickly, undoubtedly recognizing the smell of marijuana that McGinnes was now smoking openly on the sales floor. More letters, apologies, denials.
Just before closing time, McGinnes, who had been ranting about management for the last fifteen minutes (“Fuck Brandon… Fuck him!”), emerged from the back room with a Crossman pellet gun that would have exactly replicated a Magnum if not for the CO 2 thumbscrew beneath the grip.
“This is for you, Nutty,” he yelled, and began firing into the cardboard caricature of Nathan Plavin that hung suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the store. McGinnes, who had spent a few troublesome years in the army but had escaped combat duty, was a fair shot, and the pellets tore right through Plavin’s ample middle and below to his vitals.
Lee immediately shut down the showroom lights and locked the front door. I took the gun away from McGinnes and instructed him to wait for me up front. Lee walked by with the paperwork, said she’d be a minute, and disappeared into the back room. I followed her back.
She was finishing her Colt and stashing it in a plastic trashbag filled with empties when I walked in. I stood and watched her file the papers. She looked at me and at the gun, which I held at my side.
“What are you going to do with that?” she asked. “BB me to death?”
“Thought I might bring home a bag of sparrows. For my cat.”
“Sounds yummy. But why don’t you put that thing away. He keeps it in the radio room, where he keeps his beer.”
I entered the small room, had trouble finding the light switch, and groped along the wall for the spot of boxes where he usually stashed his paraphernalia. I looked to my left and saw that Lee was behind me, silhouetted against the low-wattage bulb of the office. I clumsily stashed the gun behind the nearest box.
“Where are we going?” she asked. She was near me, and her hand touched mine.
“The Corps,” I said.
“I like that place.”
“Good.” I moved closer and felt her warm breath near my face. “Thanks for helping tonight. Things got a little out of hand towards the end.”
“You’re welcome,” she said.
I cupped the back of her head and kissed her. Her tongue slid over my teeth and along the roof of my mouth. She pulled her mouth away and arched her back. I moved my hand inside the top of her shirt, reached into her loose bra, and lightly skimmed her swollen nipple. She kissed me harder this time and made a guttural sound. I reached down with my right hand and tugged on the back of her upper thigh below her but tocks, pulling her lower body up as she ground it into mine. We broke apart, and she pushed some hair away from her face.
“Well, then,” she said, and exhaled. “Let’s get going.”
SEVEN
The three of us were in the front seat of my Dodge and heading downtown. McGinnes had slithered into Mr. Liquor and had emerged, mercifully, with only a six of domestic that we were now trying to kill before we reached the club.
“Drink up,” McGinnes explained, as Lee elbowed my ribs. “The way the prices are in these places now, you’ve got to catch a buzz before you go in.”
I started to push a tape into the deck, but Tom T. was on HFS and launching into a propulsive set that was kicked off by Camper Van Beethoven’s reggae-fueled “One of These Days.” I let that ride.
We cut down Cathedral into the park, then took Pennsylvania Avenue across town. As we passed the White House, McGinnes reached across Lee and blasted the horn on the steering wheel, raising his beer to toast the protesters squatting in Lafayette Park.
In the area of the National Theater I hung a left and drove around the block a couple of times looking for a space. Between the revitalized Willard and the Shops there was plenty of nighttime congestion in this area now. I ignored McGinnes’ repeated shouts, over the wailing sax solo in the Cure’s “A Night Like This,” to park illegally, and eventually found a spot.
Lee and I crossed the street and looked back to see McGinnes standing in the middle of the road, his head fully tilted back, his small belly protruding, as he shotgunned the remainder of his beer. A carload of kids honked as they drove by, and McGinnes held out his empty so that they could see the label, then met us on the sidewalk.
There was no midweek line on the polished stone steps of the Corps. A pumped-up guy in a muscle shirt with a blond mass of hair that had been plastered up to resemble a slab of cake opened the door and blocked our way. The thud of heavy bass came out with him.