The Constant Heart (9 page)

The woman still had red hair and freckles, although she didn't seem so much fresh as a little used, a little rough, as though time had an abrasive effect. My hands were damp just looking at her, and it was hard to tell whether I was terrified of the gun or shaky because she walked in, just like that. It had an air of the supernatural.

What, in god's name, was she doing here?

“Ah, shit,” said the man with the gun. “Get over there. With that guy.”

He pointed the pistol at me. Sara walked across the room,
her gait not quite so inflammatory, but her movement still having that sultry quality, as though whatever life was doing to her, it wasn't taking away how lovely she was. She stood next to me, and without even glancing at me, or saying a word, she put her hand on mine, as she never had done in the library, and the warmth of her fingers, the touch of her palm seemed to flow into my arm, into me.

“You do what I say and you've got nothing to worry about,” said the man in the Hawaiian shirt.

“You don't have to worry about me,” said Sara.

The man stood there. Sara held my hand.

“You look like trouble to me,” said the man.

He pointed the gun at her.

Sara, of course, could simply blow her top and say, “You motherfucking asshole, you with the gun, you piece of miserable shit, you scum sucker, you two-bit excuse for a turd,” and so on. I put my other hand to my head.

“Here,” said the clerk. He opened the cash register and took out the money. Four or five hundred dollars, I guessed, although it was hard to tell because of the way he held it. Maybe it was just a bunch of ones with a few twenties on top. The man in the Hawaiian shirt took the money and looked carefully at it. He was breathing funny, as if he had asthma. It was a fragile, labored sound that you'd hear in the middle of the night if a kid were sick. Gloria had said she wanted kids. It would be so wonderful, she said, to have a child. She was jealous when she saw a woman nursing an infant.

“This doesn't seem like much,” said the guy in the Hawaiian shirt.

The clerk swallowed.

“Please,” he said.

The wall with the TVs appeared like the compound eye of an insect, a bee, say, and a hundred women in bathing suits walked across the hundred screens. If you looked at just one screen you could see that she jiggled a little, but it looked good.

“What the hell are you doing here?” the man in the Hawaiian shirt said to me. He put the money in his shirt pocket.

“Buying a TV,” I said.

“What kind did you get?” he said.

“Samsung,” I said.

“Why did you do that?” he said. “The Japanese are fucking everything up.”

“It's got a good remote,” I said.

“Well, that's just fucking great. Who do you think taught them about remote? Who wrote the book on remote? We did. The U.S. of A.,” he said.

He turned back to Sara.

“And what about you? What are you doing here?”

“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 breathing, 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.