Excerpt
1
Within seconds, she had slipped into one of those moods I dreaded.
Tucked into our usual window booth at Riccos on the day before the shooting, sharing a pitcher of Bud draft and waiting for our half-mushroom half-plain thin crust, Trisha began spewing out her day.
Fresh off her nine-to-five shift at Finneys Flowers, she was on a roll, and trapped with no alternative, I sat there, nodding like a mindless simpleton, listening to her vent.
She went on incessantly about Dora, the older woman she worked with. I had never met the lady, but within minutes, Trisha had me convinced Dora drove a broom.
Slamming into high, she shifted her wrath to her mother, Alice. Alice, Trisha complained, still treated her like a sixteen-year-old, constantly calling her and imparting unending bits of motherly wisdom like, Dont forget to eat lunch, or Try to save at least fifteen percent of this weeks paycheck. Trisha was well into a rant of her outrageous car insurance bill when the pizza arrived.
The twenty-seven-year-old woman who shared my bed ceased whining long enough to pick out a large slice of mushroom, stuff a third of it into her small, round mouth, and without missing a tick, pick up where she had left off.
Desperate not to further stoke the ire smoldering deep within her, I ate and drank with my head lowered, avoiding direct eye contact. Six times she asked, Do you understand what I mean? And six times I dutifully answered, Of course I do into my beer.
Thirty minutes later, the volatile, Irish redhead was done. Finished. Catharsis complete. Thank the Lord for small favors.
Trisha shoved away her plate of partially eaten crusts, lit a cigarette, drew in a long haul, and exhaled a hearty plume. Pushing back in her side of the booth, she adjusted her petite, hundred-pound frame, flipped back a coil of hair, and snapped me a queer look. Youre awful quiet. Whats bugging you?
The day of the shooting, I arrived at work eight minutes early. The Monday five-p.m.-to-closing shift remained my favorite. The liquor store was slow the day after a weekend; I figured most people had imbibed enough during the weekend to last well into Tuesday, and felt the need to avoid the sauce at least for a couple days. Regardless, I liked the quiet; it gave me a chance to catch up on my reading.
When I walked into Chens Liquors, Ming Chen, the sixty-six-year-old owner, stood at the register, cashing out the days receipts. Except for my evening shifts on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Chen worked the store every day from opening to closing. If the law allowed it, hed be there all day Sunday, too, watching his little eight-inch black and white portable, selling beer, wine, liquor, cigarettes and lottery tickets. The old man personified the traditional Asian work ethic.
Chen ignored me when I stepped behind the counter and hung my jacket on the coat rack. He continued counting his cash and puffing on one of those cheap Chinese cigarettes that gave off an odor of smoldering rags. He purchased them somewhere in Chinatown. I could never figure that out; he owned a store stocked with a dozen brands of quality American cigarettes, yet he chose to suck those nasty unfiltered things from that soft paper package covered with Chinese print. The stench never left the store, and from time to time, a customer standing at the register would overtly sniff the air and ask what stank. Once, a middle-aged woman dressed to the nines and buying a forty-five-dollar bottle of Grey Goose, grabbed her change from a fifty, told me to try a bath and hurried out, cringing.
You feed Cat first, Chen said, his face still in the register.
I nodded.
My first task of every shift was feeding the black feline named Cat. Chen kept a store cat, not as a pethe showed no particular attachment to itbut rather to forestall an invasion of rodents. Cat, a mix of who-knows-what breeds, spent a good portion of her day in a collapsed heap of fur, sleeping in front of the broom closet. Old, fat and out of shape, I doubted Cat was capable of catching anything. Still, she remained my lone companion on the evenings I worked, and she managed to come out of her hibernation whenever I showed up.
I yanked open the broom closet door and retrieved the five-pound bag of Cat Chow from the top shelf. This, of course, brought Cat to her feet. Moments later, she started her customary feline jig, arching her ample back and rubbing herself across my ankles, purring.
As always, I teased her with the bag. Is this what you want? Is this what you want, girl?
This made Cat rub harder and meow louder. It was our little ritual.
No feed too much. Cat fat, Chen called down the counter. Ming Chen was a man of few words, but Im positive his concern was more with the cost of Cat Chow than that of Cats portly physique.
Twenty minutes after Chen left for home, Leo stumbled into the store. It was just after eight; I remembered looking up at the Budweiser clock. Outside, a freezing rain had started to fall.
Leo came in bundled up in a soaked, dirty-green parka, his greasy unkempt hair dotted with sparkles of melting sleet, his hands shoved deep into the bulky parkas pockets.
Removing his right hand and running the back of it across his nose, he sniffed and said, Hey, Matt. Hows it going?
Leo, whats up?
He shrugged and danced back and forth on the toes of his beat-up Timberlands, glancing up and down the stores single aisle.
Leo Tracy was a pathetic soul. At twenty-five years old, his scrawny body, tucked away in that filthy, rag of an oversized parka, looked used up. His sunken brown eyes, discolored teeth and twisted, many-times-busted nose gave him the appearance of an indigent street person. He had worked for Chen for just six weeks, covering Tuesday and Thursday evenings, before the old man fired him. That was a month ago.
Most nights Leos register had come up short. At first, when he was five or six bucks under, the old man would throw fits, yelling and cursing in his native Cantonese. When the shortage touched twenty dollars, Chen stopped yelling and let Leo go.
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