by Jess Walter
“I picked it,” Vince says.
“So what’s your real name?”
“Marty.”
“Yeah, Vince is better. I’m supposed to be Ralph LaRue. You imagine? Ralph fuckin’ LaRue? Come on. I tried it awhile, but I couldn’t do it.”
“You get used to the new name.”
“I ain’t changing my name for these fuckers.” He thinks of something else. “Hey, what kind of training you get for that baking job?” Ray offers the bottle of Kahlúa.
Vince takes it. “Six months at the community college.”
Ray cocks his head. “So what’s that like?”
“Making donuts? I like it,” Vince says.
“You takin’ a percentage?”
“No.”
“Laundering money?”
“No.”
“Straight skim?”
“No,” Vince says. “I just…make donuts.”
Ray cocks his head. “I don’t get it.”
“It’s…rewarding. What about you? What are you supposed to be?”
Ray eats an apple slice. “They got me in fuckin’ diesel repair classes.”
Vince smiles.
“Me. Repairing the fuckin’ big rigs, right? Can you see that? It’s your fuckin’ drivetrain, motherfucker. Right?” Ray shrugs. “Turns out I ain’t much of a student. My teacher said I got bad concentration. Gave me a fuckin’ D.” He takes the bottle back from Vince. “Guy was a prick.”
Lenny has been standing with his hands on his hips. “Okay, if you two are done catching up, maybe someone can tell me what the hell’s going on here.”
“Sit down,” Ray says, sliding a skinned apple slice into his mouth.
“No. You listen to me, Ray.”
“Sit. Down.”
“No. I don’t know what you think—”
“Sit. The fuck. Down.”
Lenny’s face reddens. “Goddamn it, Ray!”
“Lenny,” Vince says quietly.
“No! I’m tired of this. I brought you in on this, Ray. This is my thing.”
Ray stalks across the room, puts his forearm in Lenny’s neck, and pushes him backward, against the wall. Then he plants the paring knife against his shoulder and drives it slowly in, just above the collarbone. Lenny squawks and claws for the knife, protruding from his left shoulder. His legs kick at Ray’s shins and he makes high-pitched peeps as he tries to get his hand on the handle.
Ray pulls the handgun from his waistband and points it back at Vince, who has started toward the two men. Vince stops. Then Ray puts the barrel of the gun in Lenny’s mouth. “Shut the fuck up.”
The squawking stops.
“Where is my twenty bucks?”
“Wha…Wha?” Lenny mutters with the gun barrel in his mouth.
“I give you twenty bucks, you come back with a half-gone bottle of chocolate milk from your house? Where the fuck is my twenty bucks?”
Lenny winces as he pulls the twenty from his pocket. Hands it to Ray.
Ray puts the money is his pocket. He pulls the gun out of Lenny’s mouth. “Okay. Listen. You make another sound, I’ll shoot you. You understand what I’m sayin’? I’m tryin’ to talk to this man here. I’m tryin’ to figure out this whole credit-card deal and I need you to be quiet.”
Lenny looks down at the small knife handle sticking out of his collarbone. “What about the knife?”
“That’s my fuckin’ knife. You touch it and I’ll carve you with it. Now shut the fuck up and sit the fuck down.”
Lenny slides down, his back against the wall, the small knife handle sticking out of his shoulder. Ray looks sort of embarrassed by the whole thing. He chews his bottom lip. “You sit down, too,” he says to Vince, who eases back in his chair. Ray walks back to the couch, pauses for a second, and tosses Lenny the dish towel. “You bleed on the carpet, I’m gonna peel you like this fuckin’ apple.” Lenny packs the towel around the knife handle, covering the bloom of blood on his shoulder.
Ray sits down across from Vince. “So what were we talkin’ about?”
“HERE’S MY REAL problem. Lack of training. I got no diversification. Look at you. You got these skills. You can steal. Sell dope. Make donuts. And that credit-card thing, that sounds lucrative. I wanted in on that as soon as I heard about it. You’re perfect for a place like this. Go out, earn yourself a living. Me, I just do that one thing.”
Ray shrugs. “I’m good at it, but honestly, there ain’t a lot of call for it. Even back there, I’d go months at a time without a real job. ’Course, some months, I can’t hardly keep up with orders. It’s seasonal, you know? Like in Philly, right before I left. Fuckin’ worked my ass off. Everybody wants everybody done. I got people hiring me to do the guy just hired me to do the guy I’m supposed to do. You know? Crazy.
“But then I get busted and I’m supposed to go lay low in New York and I was goin’ fuckin’ buggy. I mean…I go a few months without workin’ and I get—I don’t know, nervous. My own fault, I guess. I work too hard. I get carried away. I want to do something and”—he leans forward, confessing—“between you and me, I end up doing the only fuckin’ thing I know to do.”
He looks over at Lenny, who is staring down at the knife handle in his shoulder and breathing in little bursts, like a woman having a baby. “And this guy…Jesus, I’m smarter than him. No, what I really need is a guy like you. Somebody else makes the money, somebody smart. I’m good at backing that guy up. You know?”
Vince nods.
“So…what do you think?”
Vince rubs his brow and glances to the bedroom door. “Yeah. I could see that.”
Ray looks at the bedroom door and apparently thinks what Vince is thinking…Beth and the twenty thousand. He turns back. “Yeah. Well. We’ll see how things go, huh?”
“Hey, Ray?” Lenny’s brow is covered in sweat. The dish towel is about half red now. “I’m feeling kind of sick over here.”
“Shut up,” Ray says. But he stands up, goes to the kitchen, and gets a new dish towel. “Here.” He takes the old one and tosses it into the sink. Then he goes to the window, parts the curtains, and looks out on the empty parking lot—gravel and a row of two-story rooms, painted doors without screens. It’s after dawn, but the thick clouds make the light diffuse and Vince isn’t sure of the time. Ray is staring out the window, too. “Pretty,” he says.
It’s the ugliest view Vince has ever seen.
Ray looks at his watch. “What do you say we try your mailman now?”
Vince nods to the bedroom door. “Will you let her go?”
“After she gets my money,” Ray says. “You have my word.” Ray opens the bedroom door. Beth is asleep, curled up against the headboard; she jolts awake. Her eye is swollen shut. “Get dressed,” Ray says. “We’re goin’ to the bank.”
Ray returns to the couch and pushes the phone across the table. “Call him.”
Vince looks at the painting, those black green trees. That’s how he feels, out of focus, unsure of his own lines. Finally, he leans forward, takes the receiver off the hook, and dials. Ray watches the plastic dial roll past the numbers.
“Hey. It’s me. Vince. Look, that guy I told you about, he wants to meet.”
Listens.
“I changed my mind, that’s why.”
Listens.
“The usual place. Say, nine?”
Listens.
“No, don’t thank me. Really.”
Listens.
“Right, we’ll see you at nine.”
He hangs up the phone.
Ray smiles. “What’s this guy’s name?”
“Clay,” Vince says.
“Clay what?”
“Clay Gainer.”
“So I call that same number, I’m gonna get this Clay Gainer?”
Vince doesn’t answer.
“You better hope I get Clay Gainer.” Ray picks up the phone and dials the same number Vince just dialed.
“Yeah, who is this?” Ray asks. “Clay who?” He looks up at Vince. “An
d what do you do, Clay?” Listens. “No, I’m the friend you’re meeting later. I just wanted to make sure we were straight. So where’s that meeting?”
Ray listens.
“No shit? They got good food there?”
He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, I suppose there’s something to be said for cheap, you’re right.”
Ray shakes his head to Vince. “Okay. Hey, can we make it nine-thirty? Vince and I gotta swing by the bank first. Okay. See you then.”
He hangs up. “Dicks fuckin’ hamburgers? That’s what’s wrong with this town, right there. Everyone here is so cheap, they don’t deserve a decent meal. You people would line up to eat gravel and tree bark if you could get two for one.”
THE WIND HAS picked up, streaming leaves off the shade trees and skipping phone lines like jump ropes. They brace against it as they walk to the car, in the full flush of morning—the sun blinking behind racing clouds. Ray walks behind Vince and Lenny, his arm around Beth’s neck. She’s showered and is back in black pants and a jean jacket; she has tried to put makeup on the black eye that Ray gave her. Her hair whips around her face. “You drive,” Ray says to Vince, who takes Lenny’s keys and climbs in behind the wheel.
Lenny slumps into the passenger seat, holding the bloody towel over the knife blade in his shoulder. “Can we take this out now?”
Ray looks at the wound. “You take it out now, it’s just gonna bleed more. Don’t worry. We’ll get it in a little while.”
“But I don’t feel good, Ray. Maybe you could just drop me at home.”
“Sure,” Ray says. “In a little while.”
Ray and Beth climb in the backseat. Ray pulls her close, his arm still around her neck, the gun nestled into her rib cage just below her breast. Vince catches her eyes in the rearview mirror and tries to reassure her, although of what he’s not sure.
“You okay?” he asks her.
She nods.
“Drive,” Ray says, and Vince does.
“So where’s that house?”
“What house?” Vince asks.
“The house you two was gonna buy with my money.”
“You want to see it?”
“Yeah. It’s only eight-thirty. We got a little time.”
Vince drives north, over the river, to the neighborhood where Beth’s sad little bungalow sits, the paint chipped and fading, uneven shrubs on either side of the door. The “For Sale” sign—covered by a new sign that reads SOLD—shakes in the wind like someone loosening a tooth.
“That?” Ray stares out his window. “That’s a fuckin’ shack.” He turns to Beth. “I’m doin’ you a favor. That place is one big shit from being an outhouse.”
“It’s nicer inside,” Beth says.
“I hope so, because it’s a fuckin’ shack outside. What’d you give for it?”
“They were asking thirty-two,” Beth says. “We offered twenty-eight-five.”
Ray makes a face and looks up at Vince. “I wouldn’t have give more than ten.”
Vince drives away from the house, down a residential street, the leaves swirling in front of his car. He’d actually looked forward to living in this neighborhood. He looks up at Ray in the rearview. “So what are you gonna do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Once you get the credit-card thing rolling. And get my money. Then what?”
Ray just stares.
“I mean, are you gonna stay here? Get a crew together? What’s your plan?”
“Don’t worry about me. I got plans.”
“What kind of plans?”
Ray shrugs. “Lay low here for a while, testify in a couple of things back in Philly. And then, when that’s all done, and I’ve made a little money here, I’ll just go back, pick up where I left off.”
“To Philly?”
“No, I won’t go back to Philly. I’ll go to New York.”
“You think they’re gonna let you come back?”
Ray gestures with the gun. “Hey, I haven’t said nothing about nobody who ain’t already dead or in prison. I haven’t given them shit about New York and I ain’t gonna.”
“They think you’ll give up everybody eventually. One of the marshals told me you’re an important witness.”
“Fuck that.” Ray looks out the window, chews his thick lip. “I never agreed to talk about New York. I’ll give up a couple dead guys in Philly, then I’m goin’ back.”
“You really think they’ll let you?”
“The feds?”
“No,” Vince says simply.
“Who, the fellas?” Ray laughs. “Fuckin’ A, the fellas gimme a fuckin’ parade when I go back. Nobody does what I do as good as I did it. When they see I didn’t rat nobody out, they’ll throw me a fuckin’ party.”
Vince just drives. Ray is staring out the window and is quiet until Vince suddenly jerks the wheel, the tires squealing, and pulls into a small Catholic-school parking lot.
Ray looks around wildly, ducks behind Beth, and puts the gun in Vince’s ear. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Vince turns off the car and holds his hands out to the side. “Voting.”
“What?”
“I gotta vote.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The election. For president. I gotta vote.”
Ray stares at him for a couple of seconds, his anger becoming curiosity. “No shit? What’s that like?”
“Voting? I don’t know. I’ve never done it before.”
Ray shrugs, waves the gun at the road. “Well…you’re gonna have to do it later.”
Vince catches Ray’s eyes in the rearview again. He smiles. “Come on. We both know I’m not gonna do it later.”
Ray pushes Vince’s head forward with the gun. “Come on. Start the fuckin’ car.”
“No.” Vince spreads his hands out to the side, head tilted forward because of the gun in his neck. “You’ll have to shoot me.” Outside, a woman and a man are walking in the parking lot toward the school.
“Goddamn it!” Ray says. “Drive the car!”
Vince speaks quietly, his head bowed, the gun barrel cold at the nape of his neck: “Look. I’m not crying here. I’m not begging, or pretending we aren’t what we are. But I gotta do this first.”
THEY SHUFFLE IN together, an odd and beat-up group. Vince is first, the cut on his cheek scabbed bright red, followed by Ray, his arm around Beth’s neck in a way that doesn’t exactly make them look like a couple. She uses her right arm to hold her left arm against her chest, folded like a bird’s broken wing. Bringing up the rear is Lenny, who looks by far the worst, sweating and pale, his jacket zipped tight over the hump on his left shoulder—a bloody towel covering the three-inch knife handle.
They stand in a hallway outside the school, guarded by a fountain of holy water. Ray dips his fingers in and crosses himself. The polling place is down a short hallway, in the school’s multipurpose room. Beth and Ray follow Vince down a hallway lined with pictures made by Sunday-school kids—two rows of bunnies across from some glue-and-leaf collages. They all turn their heads as they pass the cotton-ball bunnies; Vince imagines all those tiny hands drawing all those little bunnies and gluing all those cotton-ball tails. He looks over at Beth, thinks of Kenyon, and suddenly it’s the only important thing: getting her out of this.
“That’s cute,” Ray says. “Cotton balls.”
“I don’t feel good,” Lenny says.
The multipurpose room is half gymnasium, half cafeteria—the wood backboards cranked up against the ceiling, the lunch tables folded and rolled up against the walls. In the center of the room is a long wooden table, with three old women seated at the table, behind thick black ledgers. To the right of the women are four foldout voting booths, blindered on the sides, and a wooden ballot box padlocked in front. Vince stands just inside the doorway. A woman is just finishing. She emerges from a voting booth and slides her ballot into the slot on top of the box.
Ray is at his ear. “So, how do you do thi
s?”
“I don’t really know,” Vince says. He looks at Beth. She shrugs. Lenny opens the jacket, peels back the red towel, looks at his wound, and presses it all back against his shoulder.
One of the old women rises. She might be four feet tall, all gray, wearing the kind of shoes Vince’s mom favored—the kind worn by nurses. “Is this your precinct, honey?”
Vince fumbles in his wallet for his voter registration card.
“That’s okay. I don’t need to see it. If you’re on the list you get to vote. You folks in this precinct, too?”
“No,” Ray says too quickly. “We’re just waiting for him…”
She stares at him a minute, her mouth pinched like she’s trying to keep something from getting out. “Okay.” She points to the far wall. “I guess you can wait over there if you want.” Ray, Beth, and Lenny move in a tight cluster.
The old woman takes Vince by the arm and leads him over to the table. “What’s your last name, honey?”
“Camden.”
She parks him in front of the first of the thick books. “This nice, clean-cut young man says that his last name is Camden. You got a ballot for Camden, Erlina?”
Erlina flips through the book, looking down through bifocals at the list of names. “Vincent J.?”
“Yes.”
She turns the book to him and offers him a pen. Vince signs his name. They hand him a long, narrow card covered with several rows of numbers with corresponding tabs. Vince stares at it, wondering if he was supposed to have memorized the names these numbers represent, if maybe they ran some list in the paper while he was gone.
The first woman gestures toward a voting booth. “You got your pick of real estate over there, Vincent J. Camden.” Vince likes the soft whistle of her voice through her dentures. “Slide that card inside the book and make sure you punch all the way down.”
Vince looks back over his shoulder. Ray and Beth are watching him intently. Lenny is leaning against the wall, staring at the fluorescent lights on the ceiling.
Vince walks to the booth. There is a book attached to the frame of the voting booth and a small punch connected by a string. He slides his card down in the book, until the two holes on top line up with the two pegs on the book. Vince opens to the first page.