by Craig Nova
“TV,” she said.
“What kind?” he said.
“How about a Motorola?” she said. “Yeah. Aren’t they made here?”
“Where do you work?” he said.
“At the Subaru dealership,” she said. Her hand squeezed mine.
“I fucking knew it,” he said. “You’re selling Japanese TVs on four wheels. What the fuck?”
He pointed the gun at her.
“I handle the used cars,” she said.
“Yeah? A fucking likely story,” he said.
“I can get you a good deal on a Chevrolet,” she said. “Low mileage. Great rubber. Good air. Tinted glass. All leather interior. Great sound. Good spare. I’m talking under fifty thousand miles.”
The TVs showed those bathing beauties. Jiggle here and there. Sara’s scent came to me just as it had when we looked at those pictures from the Hubble, when she refused to be romantic and when she wasn’t hard enough to deny romance all together. When she had said, “It’s all atoms in a void.”
“Atoms in a void,” I said.
“What? What the fuck did you say?”
Sara squeezed my hand.
“Look,” I said. “I just came in here to buy a TV.”
“How come she’s holding your hand?”
“We’re old friends,” said Sara.
“Void. You want to see what a void is?”
Sara shook her head. She whispered, “You remember what you wrote to me when I got locked up, Jake?”
“Yes, I remember. I think about it all the time,” I said.
“Me too,” she said. “How’s your dad?”
“My father’s well,” I said.
“That’s good,” said Sara. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“My mother moved to an ashram,” I said.
“Ashram, smashram,” said the man with the gun. “More Jap shit.”
The man with the gun said to the clerk, “The first thing you are going to do is lock the door. So get over there. I don’t want any old women coming in here and pissing themselves because they’re gonna get shot.”
The keys were on a sort of chrome yo-yo at the clerk’s belt, with a spring-loaded string, and he went over to the door, but his hands were shaking and he kept stabbing at the lock until Sara stepped over, put her hand on his, took the key, and slipped it into the door. It had a sexual quality, that quick slip into the lock. Then she turned the key, pulled it out, and let it go. It snapped back to the clerk’s belt and he said “Ow.”
“You want to have something to say ‘Ow’ about?” said the man with the gun.
“No,” said the clerk.
Sara stood next to me. The clerk put his hands on the counter, a glass one that was covered with fingerprints. I guess he hadn’t gotten around to cleaning it with Windex. Middle of the week. No customers, just Sara, me, the clerk, and the guy in the Hawaiian shirt. The door locked.
Still, a bald man with a form-fitted T-shirt to show how much time he spent in the gym tapped on the door with a key, tap, tap, tap. Sara took the OPEN sign and turned it around so it said CLOSED. The guy in the form-fitted shirt gave her the finger.
“Jesus,” said the man with the gun. “Another asshole. Why, for two cents I go out there and let... ” His labored breathing started again, and he was sweating now, too, not just a film but big drops that began to slide down his face like tears. Tears. Shit.
“Come on,” said the man with the gun. “No one is going to bother us. Let’s go back to the office.” He turned to us. “You, too.”
He made that asthma-like sound, wet, deep in his chest, labored. It sounded like he was dying. Then he took the key on the retractable string and gave it a jerk to break it off the clerk’s belt.
“You think I want to get trapped in here?” he said. “You think I’m stupid enough to get locked in here?”
“No,” said the clerk.
“And I’m not stupid enough to think there’s only this amount of money here.”
We walked down the aisle, past the boom boxes and the adapters for headsets and a bunch of telephones. Through a door to the back room, and in it boxes had that funny smell of cardboard and new electronics. A lot of clear plastic lay around. The clerk went in first, then Sara, then me. The man with the gun last. Sara began to sweat a little along her upper lip.
“How could I have been so stupid?” she said.
“For coming in here to buy some fucked-up Japanese TV?” the man said.
“Yeah,” she said. “For not knowing what things are worth.”
“Tell me about it,” said the man.
We stood along the wall, by the door, while the man with the gun went through the desk. Checks, paper clips, Pepto-Bismol, and some spray that freshens the breath. Some books with prices in them. A pornographic magazine in which there were pictures of men who had breasts and who wore garter belts and fishnet stockings. I guessed the breasts had been made by a plastic surgeon. The man with the gun glanced at it and then said to the clerk, “Jesus. Jesus Christ. It’s bad enough that you sell all that Japanese stuff, but you have to have this stuff, too.”
“Please,” said the clerk.
“Where did you get the magazine?” said the guy with the gun.
“At the newsstand. Down the block,” said the clerk. He licked his lips.
“What about you?” said the guy with the gun to me. “You like this stuff?”
“Look,” I said. “I just came in to buy a TV.”
“I’m warning you,” said the guy. “You better give me an answer.”
That goatee was a lot like Dieckmann’s.
“It doesn’t do much for me,” I said.
“And you,” he said to Sara. “You like to see men like this? All fucked up like this?”
“No,” said Sara.
“Some women like to see men humiliated, though, don’t they?”
“I guess,” said Sara.
“Guess? Guess?” said the man. He flipped the safety off.
“Look,” I said. “She’s not like that.”
“Oh?” said the man. “Prove it.”
“When I was a kid she tried to break me into a women’s prison to spend the night.”
“No kidding,” said the man. “That’s great.” He lowered the gun. “But I’ve got to get some money. I’ve got responsibilities.”
“OK,” said the clerk.
“What the hell else have you got in here?” said the guy with the gun, going through the desk. “What else am I going to find? Have you got money in here all ready to take to the bank? A deposit?”
“No,” said the clerk.
“Here are some deposit slips,” said the guy. “Where’s the money?”
“I gave you what we’ve got,” said the clerk.
“Do you know what an inhaler costs these days?” said the guy with the gun. “Proventil. Forget the steroids. Just Proventil.”
“No,” said the clerk. “Please.”
“Please what?”
“Please don’t,” said the clerk.
“Ah, shit,” said the man in the Hawaiian shirt.
My ears started ringing after that. If I moved my head the pitch changed. The surfer on the Hawaiian shirt the man wore seemed to be having trouble with his balance, his arms out as his board went down a wave. Piles of foam. Stress marks in the wave that curled above him, almost breaking. Lots of palm trees, too. The shirt, the light on the gun seemed very bright and in the distance I heard the muted sound of one of the TVs.
Sara held my hand even when the gun went off.
The room smelled like the Fourth of July. I sat down on the floor and put my hands to my head. Sara did, too. We both leaned against the wall. The man with the gun came closer. The clerk leaned against the wall by his desk, sort of trapped there, and held his leg with both hands.
“Shit, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t mean to do that. It was a mistake,” said the man with the gun. “I didn’t want to shoot him.” He went back to that funny b
reathing, although I couldn’t hear it so much as I could see that he was laboring. He looked at me and said, “Goddamned Samsung.”
“What? What? I can hardly hear,” I said to Sara.
“My ears are ringing. What?” she said. “And I’m in such big trouble already. Shit.”
“Stop that,” said the man.
The clerk, in a barely audible voice, said, “Please. Call the ambulance. Please.”
The man in the Hawaiian shirt went on breathing, although it was getting more labored.
“You’re one lucky son of a bitch,” he said to me. “You know that? You almost paid the price for buying that Japanese TV.” He pointed the gun at Sara. “And you’re really lucky.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” said Sara.
“Come on,” I said. “We don’t need to argue.”
“No?” said Sara. “He shoots some guy and you want me to keep my mouth shut?”
There she was, coming right out of that ringing in our ears, just the way she had been in the library years before.
The man took a hit from his inhaler, then patted the money in his pocket and said, “Fucking Samsung. Fucking Subaru. China is going to eat my ass next.” Then, just like that, as though he had bought an alarm clock, he walked out.
I picked up the phone. A woman took the call. Funny accent, not Spanish. Maybe Portuguese or Brazilian. I had always wanted to go up the Amazon. Brown water. Green trees the color of money. Smoke here and there. The woman who took the call was able to stay calm because she was so tired. She said an ambulance would be here soon and that she would call the police, too.
“It doesn’t hurt so much,” said the clerk.
“That’s probably a good sign,” I said.
“Maybe,” said the clerk. “Maybe not.”
“It’s not bleeding too bad,” said Sara.
“Maybe it’s bleeding inside,” said the man. “A big artery is in there. You know, people bleed out after getting shot in the leg.”
In the bathroom I found some paper towels, those brownish ones like in a school, and brought them out and put them on his leg and pressed on it where he was bleeding. He started making a funny breathing sound like the guy in the Hawaiian shirt.
“Get rid of the magazine, will you?” said the clerk.
“What?” I said.
“That one,” he said. He pointed at the desk. “I don’t want my wife to see it.”
Sara threw it in the trash can at the side of the desk.
“No,” said the clerk. “Not there. Anybody who comes in here can see it. Outside. At the side of the building there’s a Dumpster.”
He leaned back, panting. He swallowed a lot.
“Just get that out of here,” he said to me. And then to Sara, too.
Now the TVs showed some strong hands, the fingers of them curved over the keyboard of a laptop computer. They weren’t real hands, but ones that had been drawn by a commercial artist. They looked very competent, like the hands of a surgeon or a baseball player. A catcher, maybe. Across the top a sign on the screen said, “Why not start the future?” The hands started typing on a keyboard, all of them looking firm and reassuring, although the colors varied from TV to TV. Some looked like they had been dipped in pink paint. At least the guy with the gun hadn’t locked us in. The string dangled from the key that he had left in the lock.
Outside, the parking lot only had a few cars in it, the dust on them obvious in the midday light. Sara and I went along the front of the store and to the side of the building to the Dumpster. Big and green, full, with a cloud of flies rising into the air when I approached. They made a rainbow-like color in the air. Next to the Dumpster a guy with a tattoo and a shaved head drank a can of beer out of a bag. As soon as we put the magazine in he got up and dug through the trash. It didn’t take him long to find the magazine, which he opened and read as he sat down again. As we went along the wall, back toward the front of the store, I heard him stop turning the pages.
“Thanks,” said the clerk.
The brown paper towels from the bathroom were soaked through, and the blood on my fingers, when I pressed down, was a sort of purple color. Sara got some more towels, and we both pressed down now.
“I don’t really like that stuff,” the clerk said.
“It’s all right if you do,” said Sara.
“You don’t have to say that,” he said. “I don’t want you to think I really like it.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” said Sara.
“It doesn’t have to be a secret, does it, if I don’t like it.”
We sat there for a while with the half-muted TVs. It kept coming out though, that funny-colored stuff that didn’t look like blood in a movie. It looked more like the middle of a steak that isn’t cooked and is sort of blue.
The clerk said he was thirsty. In the bathroom some Dixie cups were in a dispenser, and I took one down and filled it up. The clerk sucked at the lip of the cup, saying, “I’ve never been so thirsty. Why do you think that is?”
The cops and the ambulance didn’t arrive. That wasn’t like the movies either. We could have played a game of hangman or something. And then I thought, Shit, you are getting close to panic if you are thinking bullshit like that. Sara put her hand on the clerk’s head. Then she whispered to me, “He’s sort of clammy and cold.”
“That’s just shock,” I said.
“Am I going into shock?” said the clerk.
“Maybe a little,” I said.
“Where are they?” said the clerk. “All I do is work and pay taxes and now where’s the ambulance?”
A drop of sweat fell from his nose, as though he had been working out.
“Goddamn, goddamn, goddamn,” said the clerk. “He has to shoot me. What the fuck for?”
The second hand on the clock on the wall dragged along, like it was under water. Sara pushed more paper towels against the guy’s leg and then I took a turn.
“Jake, we’ve got to do something . . . ,” said Sara.
“Like what? Take him in my car and then we’re in traffic and the ambulance shows up here?”
“So we’ve just got to wait?” she said. “Like we’re trapped?”
“It’s going to be all right,” I said.
Sara leaned closer.
“Say that to me, too, Jake,” she said.
“It’s going to be all right,” I said. She bit her lip. The tears made little crescents along her eyelids, and then she wiped them away with the back of her hand and sniffled. I gave her my handkerchief.
“You always were the kind who had a clean handkerchief,” she said.
The clerk leaned against the wall. The TVs, which were visible just beyond the office door, not all of them, just a sliver, now showed a science show about the oceans, and enormous waves rose, curled, with wind blowing mist off the top, like smoke, and the soundtrack was like a trash compacter that crushed metal, even hard metal, down to nothing. The clerk seemed to try to bring up a glob from his throat, but he just couldn’t do it, and the noise was at once sad and familiar, like the sound made by those joke pads, a whoopee cushion that makes a farting razz when someone sits on it. The clerk’s head tapped the wall and then slumped over so that his hair made a greasy mark, about three inches long, that had the shape of a new moon, although a black one. I guess he used some kind of greasy mousse, but it only made him look like he was wearing a wig. The kind an undertaker used.
“What does that mean?” I said.
“What do you think?” she said.
I put my ear to his chest but it was silent and his neck didn’t throb. So I went into the bathroom and washed my hands, once and then again, and Sara did, too, our slippery fingers touching each other as we washed. Then we used those towels and came back to the office where the guy wasn’t gray, but sort of a blue-white.
The ambulance came, the cops, and two TV vans, too, their little dishes on top appearing, for a moment, like they were going to track a missile or shoot one down. A woman with blo
nd hair and some makeup that looked like plastic skin asked Sara, “Were you scared? Tell us how you felt?”
“Naw,” said Sara.
And then the woman from the TV station turned to me and said, “Of course, you were scared, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Plenty.”
“There you have it,” said the interviewer. “A difference in perspective . . . Did anything else happen? Aside from just standing around?”
The man with the beer in the bag walked by the TV van with the pornographic magazine in hand, his gait a little unsteady, his beard like sand on his face in the sunlight.
“Get a load of this,” he said to the interviewer from the TV station.
“Ah,” said the interviewer. “Ah. Maybe some other time.” We had to wait around while the EMT guys in their fresh, white uniforms wheeled out the gurney with that shape under a green bag. The cops took our addresses and listened to what happened. Once, and then again, and once more. They said we might have to look at some pictures of people who had been arrested before. They’d call. The clerk’s wife showed up, moving like a sleepwalker, her voice sort of drugged, too, as the words came out. “He’s dead? He’s dead?”
The cops wanted us to go to the hospital to get checked out, but Sara just shook her head and then helped me put my TV into my car. Then she went around and got into the front seat, on the passenger side, and said, “Let’s have a drink. OK?”
THE BAR WAS long and dark and had models of ships along the shelf above the liquor and mirrors behind the bottles, ocean liners with little lights inside. A jukebox with old songs, like the Ramones.
We sat in a booth with dark wood, stained by years of cigarette smoke and I guess the worry that people brought in here, as though fear does something to the surroundings. I’ve noticed it in the halls of courtrooms, like the one where my parents got divorced. Sara and I both had a slug of cold vodka and sat there while our pictures came on the TV, the two of us standing there, Sara’s eyes moving from me to the street, as though waiting for someone to pick her up. I stood with my hands in my pockets and seemed to be staring at the woman reporter’s hair. Was it real? I guess that’s what was on my mind: what was real and what was fear. Had we almost gotten shot or was this just an inconvenience?