“That’s a lovely thought, Mary. I want to thank you for putting that image in my head.”
“Well, maybe if he sold one or two off, we could have windows in the living room instead of holes in the walls. That might be nice. Live in a place with windows.”
He cut two slices of cake. As he did, he leaned in for another look at her phone. She didn’t glance up at him, but she did turn it over so the screen was facedown.
“Jim already had a slice this morning. He doesn’t need another.”
“No?”
“He’s overweight and diabetic, and he didn’t need the first slice.” She looked tired, dark rings under her eyes.
“What are you doing to get around without the van?” he asked.
“I got friends from work who don’t mind helping out with rides.”
“Was that who you were texting with just now? Friend from work?”
“How’s your kid adjusting to only seeing Dad on court-supervised visits? That must be strange for both of you. Like family visits in prison.”
Kellaway put a slice of cake on a plate for Jim and another on a plate for himself and went out, mugs under one arm, scotch under the other.
He balanced one of the plates on Jim’s left knee and took the gun away from him. Kellaway began to feed rounds into the magazine, while Jim ate cake with his fingers. Jim had been a big man even in the army, but in those days most of it had been in his chest and shoulders. Now he was carrying it around the waist, and his fat, round face had a corrugated quality, pocked with little dimples.
At the back of the yard was a splintery, tilting slat fence, with targets pinned up along it: a zombie version of Barack Obama, a zombie version of Osama bin Laden, and a blown-up photograph of Dick Cheney. Politically speaking, Jim Hirst was a man who liked to spread his contempt equally among all parties.
“You bought this gun for yourself?” Kellaway said, hefting it. “Feels like a squirt gun. What’s up with this grip?”
“Why don’t you shoot it before you bitch about it?”
The gun was so small it almost disappeared in his hand. Kellaway lifted it, looked down the sight, and saw a green dot floating across Barack Obama’s forehead.
“When did you start to go for James Bond shit like this?” Kellaway asked.
“I’ve always dug the James Bond shit. Laser sights, incendiary bullets. I look forward to our smart-gun future if the NRA ever lets us have it. I’d like a gun that knows my name and how I take my coffee. Who doesn’t want that?”
“Me,” Kellaway said, and fired. He put one in Obama’s left eye, one in his forehead, one in his throat, one in zombie bin Laden’s mouth, two in Dick Cheney’s pacemaker. “Give me Bruce Willis over Roger Moore any day. I don’t want a gun with a laser beam and a British accent. I want a gun that speaks American and looks like it was built to make holes in school buses.”
“Why would you need to shoot through a school bus?”
“If you knew what my neighbor’s kids were like, you’d understand.”
He traded the gun for a glass of scotch, had a swallow. It tasted sweetly of vanilla and went down like kerosene, ignited the lining of his throat, made him feel like an explosive just waiting for someone to pull the pin.
“Mary is in a mood,” he said.
“Mary’s always in a mood,” Jim said, and waved at the haze in the air, blinking reddened eyes and coughing weakly. Kellaway wondered if it was just the smoke or if he was carrying a cold. “She was gone late Saturday night, and my piss bag got too full, popped a tube, and soaked my pants.”
Kellaway didn’t have any sympathy for that. “You can’t change your own piss bag?”
“I forget to check it. Mary does that for me. But she was off getting shitfaced at TGI Fridays with the girlfriends. They like to go out on the weekend and talk trash about their men. I assume Mary has more trash to talk than most. Her friends can say they don’t get laid enough, but none of their men need a hydraulic device to get a thirty-second stiffy.” He reloaded methodically. “I’m sitting there in urine, she gets back and starts in on me about money, about how her credit card bounced. Like I haven’t already been pissed on enough.”
“Yeah. She was saying inside. She wants you to sell some of your guns.”
“Like I could get anything for them. Everyone is selling guns online. They’re cheaper than the steel they’re made out of.”
“You got anything you want to dump? I mean, the kind of thing you can own without shame as an American. Not one of these guns where you feel like you got to shoot it with one pinkie sticking out, like it’s a teacup and you’re sitting down to scones with the queen.”
Jim lifted his mug of scotch, held it under his lips without drinking. “You want to feel like a gunslinger, I’ve got a .44 SuperMag that’ll make holes the size of a cabbage in the unlucky target of your choice.”
“Maybe something a little smaller.”
Jim drank deeply, swallowed, coughed a rough, barking cough into his fist. “I got a few things. We could talk, I guess. It would get Mary off my back, you wanted to take one of the older guns for a few bucks.”
Kellaway said, “Jim, I can’t pass a background check. I’ve got that injunction hanging over me. That bitch lawyer of hers destroyed me in court.”
“Hey, you didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask. I don’t got to do a background check. I’m not a gun dealer. I won’t get in trouble. You might, but I won’t.” Jim touched the joystick on the right armrest of his wheelchair. The chair spun halfway around with a whine of servo motors. Then he stopped and angled a dark, almost belligerent look up into Kellaway’s face.
“I sell you a gun, though, you gotta swear one thing.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“You ever decide to go on a killing spree,” Jim Hirst said, “promise you’ll start with me.”
July 6, 2013
9:38 A.M.
ROG TEXTED HER TO SEE if she could pop into work a half hour before opening. Becki texted him back, I need it 2, SO BAD, but he didn’t reply.
In the car she put on a pale lipstick that gave her mouth the appearance of being lightly frosted in jizz. She adjusted her cardigan so the upper lacy bits of her black-and-emerald bra were showing, and after consideration she reached under her skirt and wiggled out of her panties. She poked them into the glove compartment, next to the present that had been there ever since Christmas.