‘Won’t deal less. Otherwise not worth getting out of bed, son.’
Evan didn’t have two hundred dollars, but he said, ‘I’ll be back here in an hour.’
Now that he had a customer, the kid nodded. Ambled off across the lot, sliding a fresh Pixy Stix out of his pocket, tearing off the top, and dumping the purple powder onto his tongue.
Evan walked four blocks until he found another convenience store. He wore the sunglasses he had found in the stolen pickup and he bought hair-coloring dye, a pair of scissors, a giant coffee, and three breakfast tacos thick with fluffy eggs and potato and spicy chorizo sausage for breakfast. It didn’t get him closer to two hundred dollars. He swallowed the crazy urge to show the clerk the gun tucked in the back of his pants to see if that would produce two hundred bucks. The clerk rang him up. Watching Evan when she gave him the change.
Fear slammed into his stomach like a fist. Was this what paranoia was?
He hurried back to the motel. Evan locked himself in. Devoured the breakfast tacos and finished the black coffee while he read the directions on the hair dye. It would take only thirty minutes to set.
He cut his hair, locks falling into the sink. He had never given himself a haircut before and it looked really bad until he muttered, ‘Screw vanity,’ and he hacked it into a not-as-bad burr. He removed the small hoop earring from his left ear. The earring seemed too young for him now; it was time to grow up. Then he dyed his hair, sitting on the bathroom floor, refining his plan while the black color set. He laughed when he saw himself in the mirror, but it was serviceable. He didn’t look exactly like the picture in the paper. But he still looked like himself.
He had about eighty bucks left and ten minutes before the kid showed up with the ammunition. He drove back to the store where he had met the kid, parked at the edge of the oil-pocked lot. He went inside the store. An old lady bought orange juice and a can of pork-and-beans and shuffled out the door. Evan waited until she was gone and approached the clerk. This clerk nodded along with a Sunday-morning evangelical-church service and slurped coffee. She was an older lady, dour, with a stray eye.
‘Excuse me, ma’am. That tall kid who hangs out by the phone,’ Evan said. ‘Mr. Pixy Stix. Is he a problem for you?’
‘Why you care?’
‘He warned me off using the phone. I bet he’s using it for drug deals.’
‘He don’t buy enough Pixy Stixs to pay rent.’
‘So if I get him to quit hanging out here, you won’t be heartbroken? You wouldn’t feel you have to call the police right away?’
‘I don’t want no trouble.’
‘He’ll never know what hit him.’
‘What do you care what he’s doing? I never seen you in here before.’
‘My aunt just moved in down the street, and that kid smarted off to her when she was using the phone, and old ladies should be able to make phone calls without hassle.’
‘So tell the police.’
‘That’s a temporary solution. The police come, then they go. My idea is longer lasting.’
The clerk studied him. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going to hang out at the phone and wait for him.’
‘Why? You buying?’
He held up the duffel and showed her his camcorder. ‘No. I’m selling.’
The kid returned, five minutes late. But not alone. His companion was a thick-necked young woman with a toughness etched in her face. She stood bigger and taller than the kid, and a similar set to their eyes and their frowns suggested she might be an older sister. She carried a shopping bag from Goodwill in her hand. They arrived in a new Explorer and parked at the end of the lot.
Evan stood by the phones with the duffel over his shoulder, the digital camcorder wedged in place in the duffel. He left the zipper gaping open enough so that the lens could get a clear shot. The woman didn’t like that he had the duffel. Tension deepened the frown in her face.
‘Hey,’ Evan said.
‘Drunk barber got ahold of your hair, son,’ the kid said.
‘The makeup director wanted me to have a more street look,’ Evan said, and waited to see what they would say.
The kid just frowned as if Evan were crazy – and then the woman said, ‘Let’s go to the back of the store.’
‘Actually, there’ll be a phone call coming in for you here in a minute. We should just wait right here.’ Evan put a bright, fake smile on his face.
‘Excuse me?’ The woman was running the show now, not the kid.
‘Here’s the deal,’ Evan said. ‘I’m a scout for a new reality show, it’s called Tough Streets. HBO next fall. We put people who don’t have any street smarts in neighborhoods where they’ve never been before. Picture soccer moms and suburban dads trying to cope in the Fifth Ward. Whoever can accomplish a set list of goals, well, they move on in the competition. The grand prize is a million bucks.’
The woman stared at Evan, but the boy said, ‘I got an idea for a show. You put my ass in River Oaks, let me live in luxury, and film that all the livelong day.’
‘Shut up. You buying or not?’ the woman said.
‘Did you bring the ammo?’ Evan asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m buying. But we’re test-driving this as one of our challenges. I just wanted to see how easy it was to buy ammo on the street. While taping.’ He raised the camcorder, with its lens cap off and recording lights aglow, out of the duffel. ‘Smile.’
‘No, no, no!’ the woman said, and she shielded her face with her fingers.
‘Wait. Wait.’ Evan switched off the camcorder. ‘I’m not getting you in trouble. I just had to test the challenge. Ma’am, you’re an original. You’re what we’re looking for on Tough Streets.’
‘Me. On TV.’ But she brought her hands down from her face.
He held up one hand as though framing her face. ‘I think you’d be great. But you don’t have to be on TV if you don’t want to be.’
‘Big Gin, gonna be a star.’ The kid laughed.
Big Gin froze. ‘What bullshit is this?’
Evan held up his hands. ‘No bullshit. The contestants all have street guides as partners in the game, because you and I know that they won’t have a chance without them. Dumbass people from suburbia.’
‘Like you,’ Big Gin said.
‘Yes, like me. You’re beyond telegenic. The strength in your face. The confidence of your walk, your talk. Of course the street guide shares half the prize money -’
‘A half million. You bullshitting me,’ Big Gin said.
‘- unless you have a record,’ Evan finished his sentence. ‘We could not hire anyone with a record. The lawyers are just asses about that.’
‘Buying ammo would get you a record,’ Big Gin said.
‘Well, the contestants wouldn’t truly be buying real ammunition. Just blanks. The lawyers are asses about that, too.’
‘She ain’t never been convicted,’ the kid said.
‘Shut up.’ Big Gin looked at Evan in a way he’d seen in film-deal meetings: a player who’s wondering if she’s the one being played.
‘This is bull,’ the kid said. ‘You got two hundred bucks for the ammo, or not, ’cause we ain’t staying if you don’t.’
‘Shut up,’ Big Gin said to him.
‘Um, I cannot give you two hundred bucks,’ Evan said. ‘That would mean we’ve conducted an illegal transaction, and we couldn’t hire you then for the show, Ms…’
‘Ginosha,’ she said.
‘Don’t be telling him your name,’ the kid said. ‘He don’t have the money, let’s go.’ Evan had a leftover card in his wallet from a screening and cocktail party he’d been at last week in Houston. One was from a producer with a Los Angeles production company called Urban Works, a guy named Eric Lawson. He handed Big Gin the card. ‘So sorry. Meant to give this to you earlier.’
‘Goddamn,’ she said. ‘You for real.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Where’s your camera crew? Why just you?’
‘Because this is guerrilla TV. We don’t bring camera crews out here when we’re scouting for talent and locations. It would not be reality TV then, would it?’