Authors: Stephen Schottenfeld
“That hasn’t happened in
months
,” Huddy says, smiling at Harlan and his future sale, but it’s only a half-hour celebration till pawn detail crashes the party.
“I know, I’m the grim reaper,” Sergeant Bell says, accordion files tucked under an arm, badge flapping on his chest like some harmless conventioneer. “He couldn’t spell burglary, but he could tell us every house he hit. Drove us all around, confessing. Mighty white of him.”
Huddy trading the jewelry for a receipt. He wishes he could get Yewell here right now, but of course he’s gonna have to wait a legal month before he can make the sale.
“He should do some time,” Bell says, the chain dropping inside a file, “if we still have a court system.” And then he slips out the door.
“Probably keep the chain himself,” Harlan says, watching the car drive off. “What’d your man look like?”
Huddy shakes his head, throws a hand out. “He was wearing a nametag that said ‘thief.
’
”
“He black?”
Huddy nods. And the one before that, too, and the one before that was white and the one before that was black with a white girl waiting in the car, and Huddy would list every complexion if it got any cash back. He gets burned more by the blacks, but burned worse by the whites.
Huddy sees Tom, his scrap-gold buyer, pulling up—Tom always waiting for the midmorning lull and wearing his smoke-screen outfit of customer clothes to disguise his briefcase cash. “Got business,” Huddy says, and he grabs an envelope from the safe and flips the counter for Tom, and the two walk back to his office. He’ll watch the floor and Harlan on the monitor.
Huddy hands him the envelope.
“Light, huh?” Tom says, waving it, and Huddy shrugs. “Least we’re catching the market good.” The years of built-up trust, Tom just reads the figures on the envelope, what’s fourteen-karat and what’s ten, and plugs the numbers into his iPhone. “You got four seventy-five here,” he says, and tags the envelope with the number and Huddy’s name.
Huddy nods. Tom unlatches the briefcase on his lap, the envelope goes in and out comes the cash. He counts and Huddy glances at the monitor, split-screen showing nothing in the store and outside just Tom’s car with his armed guard sitting inside, but then another car pulling up.
“Bought a thousand off a guy last week,” Tom says. “This sanitation feller. Those sewer rats catch more gold. They got filters to catch it. Shit Gold, he calls it. Banged-up and dirty, but I tell ’em it’s as good as clean.”
A white woman enters and Huddy watches her. “You got it, Harlan?”
“I sure do.”
The woman walks straight back to the loan counter, no picking through aisles or merchandise, and then Harlan puts his hand on his heart and fake-staggers his legs, and Huddy knows it’s KayKay even before Harlan flips the counter to go to her. “Well . . .” Huddy says.
“Yep, time to fade into the crowd,” Tom says, but Huddy sits watching KayKay and Harlan, two figures hugging like they’re taking cover beneath a tree. Huddy is in his own store, but he feels like he’s looking in on Harlan’s life—and how quickly it’s rejoining itself, to Memphis and Huddy and now her. He lays back for a while, watching them on the monitor like they’re moving inside his own brain, then walks out. “Look who’s turned up,” he says, although he’s the one feeling like he’s come from nowhere, and KayKay gives a small sleepy smile like she’d just seen him yesterday. A touch more wear and tear to her face, a white T-shirt with the neck stretched loose. Her legs look good in the jeans but are probably bony without them. But she looks clean and showered, painted nails and the perfume worn for Harlan, Huddy thinks.
“Called her, told her I was here,” Harlan says, and Huddy wonders when, or if, a phone call was even needed. They’re the same animals, two of the same species picking up each other’s tracks. “I guess I better get on the right side of the counter,” Harlan says.
Huddy looks again at her open neckline, thinks of a drunk hand clutching as she scrambles for the door. “He tell you his parole officer says he shouldn’t be around women?”
Harlan laughs. “She knows you a windjammer and not to trust a word outta your mouth.”
“I might believe
half
.” She leans in, looks over the counter at Harlan’s legs. “Maybe I should check your ankles, make sure you’re not wearing one of them bracelets.”
Huddy smiles. “What you been up to, KayKay?”
She exhales long and bored. “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t remember my life too good.” Her dark eyes sweep the store like she’s looking out at a dusty country. “Mom’s having a classic fall-apart, if you want to know everything.” She shrugs, scans the gun racks, then looks at Huddy. “Boys with toys,” she says and wags a finger. “What’s he having you do here?”
“He’s the post commander,” Huddy says.
Harlan huffs. “More like sit in a chair and be a hemorrhoid.”
KayKay looks around, but Huddy knows where she’ll settle. “You should let him show the jewelry.”
“Oh, yeah?” Huddy says. “Might help if he knew a diamond from a piece of gravel.”
KayKay shrugs. “He’d be good at it, that’s all. Sell all this stuff like it was real.”
“It
is
real,” Huddy says.
In the doorway, the same gun buyer from yesterday, the nonbuyer, although maybe Huddy’s wrong today. Already got the Winchester—waiting for Yewell to call on that—so maybe this is his gun day. Huddy watches him approach. “You back for your gun?”
“Then Harlan won’t have to lie about it,” KayKay says.
The customer’s lips pinch. “Thought I’d check some other pieces.”
Huddy nods but he’s not gonna waste his steps, just turns a useless hand at the gun room.
Harlan at the jewelry case across from KayKay, and Huddy watches them huddle over the jewelry like it’s throwing firelight to keep them warm.
“You like this one?” Harlan points out a chunky ring.
“Maybe if I had green teeth and lived in Frayser in a trailer.”
Huddy laughs, but Harlan doesn’t. “Looks like she’s gone upscale on you,” Huddy says.
“More like be a wannabe,” Harlan says, and he waits for her fingers to select elsewhere.
Huddy studying their hands and faces to see what feeling or secret is passing between them. He can’t say what’s beginning or needs mending because he doesn’t know what ever ended or got broken. She points at a necklace, and Harlan unlocks the case and his hand dips down to lift the glinting object off the bar.
“That bracelet, too,” KayKay says, tapping on the countertop—a sheet of glass that’s sitting in a room that’s hers—and Harlan’s hand grabbing again but Huddy says, “Nuh-uh. One
at a time. People gonna try to get ten rings spread out on the counter. One’ll go missing, fast.”
“Too bad you don’t have any SIGs,” the customer says. “I got a SIG 210 at home. Thing’s got the mechanical precision of a watch. Don’t know whether to wind it or load it.”
Huddy nods.
“People, huh?” KayKay says. “You don’t gotta be careful with me. I ain’t
them
.”
“Course not,” Huddy says. “I was talking others. Gypsies—they like to do it that way.”
“Well, I ain’t wearing ten scarves.”
“Just trying to teach Harlan here. Second thing: They want to see something, you put it in their
hand
. That way, they have to give it back to you. On the counter, it gets gone.”
“You sure talk suspicious,” she says.
“Thanks for educating,” Harlan says. “You mind if I put this on her
neck
? Turn around.”
KayKay turns and leans back and Harlan spins the necklace around her and pulls it up, his hands glancing her shirt, her shoulders, the sides of her upturning neck, his knuckles brushing her ears and pressing the top of her spine while he hooks the latch—Huddy almost laughing at all the contact and handiwork. KayKay circles around to Harlan and he tilts the makeup mirror, hits the necklace right, and Huddy laughs aloud now, but he’s still impressed with the form. KayKay tucks her hair behind her ears and her fingers slide across to trace the jewelry on her skin.
“I got a gun in every room of the house,” the man says, and he makes a gun of his hand. “By the back door, too. Got a gun on top of the fridge by the back door, and if someone tries getting in they gotta go through my fridge gun.” His voice booms. “And my fridge gun’s a Smith, so you know it’ll go bang forever.”
“Sure will,” Huddy says, rolling his eyes.
“I told you Harlan knew how to show jewelry,” KayKay says.
“You tell ’em the price,” Harlan says to Huddy, “I tell ’em why they need to take it home.”
“All these people breaking into sheds. You go into
my
shed, you getting carried out.” He looks at Huddy for approval, but Huddy’s not gonna cheer his dead shed-invader.
Harlan extends his middle finger to impale the man and shut his mouth. “Huddy, what’s she gotta do to get a necklace like this?”
“Save up.”
“Well how ’bout installment plans?”
“Ten percent down for layaway. I’ll waive the processing fee.” He smiles his soft heart.
“How ’bout you just waive the price?” KayKay teases.
“Maybe your mama . . .” Harlan says. His neck yanks and his teeth bite down. “All that you done. Maybe she got something she ain’t needing, and she help you with this here thing.”
Huddy watches Harlan glance at KayKay, his eyes drawing out some memory pang, some kick to the muddy curb that KayKay closes her lips and blinks about. “She sure been walking on me lately. Ever since daddy died. I guess I backed the wrong horse.”
“My son, he’s over in Iraq. Sharpshooter like his dad.”
“Hey man,” Harlan says, his face burning. “Lemme ask you. How come every military man I meet is a shooter? You know? How come nobody’s the cook?”
“Huh?”
“I mean, somebody has to be the cook, but every military guy I meet’s some special-ops, Green Beret, ex-marine sniper.”
The man studies Harlan, trying to measure out the insult from the spit-out craziness, but Harlan keeps adding, “I wish I met one guy from the military who’d say, ‘I was the
cook
and couldn’t shoot for shit, but I made the best damn chili around. I was the best damn food server.
’
”
Huddy watches the man’s eyes go down to the gun at Harlan’s hip and take it in, Harlan’s fingers not there but his body dug in and steady as a duelist.
“I mean, somebody has to be the cook!” Harlan’s face wild and his voice country-loud. The man frowns at the gun, trades stares with Harlan. Then he locks eyes with Huddy.
“He just got his jaw unwired,” Huddy says, but he’s smiling ’cause Harlan’s crazy-assed antics got the guy moving on.
“Sounds like,” he hears the man say at the door.
“Why do all gun buyers have short dicks?” Harlan says.
The door stays closed, the man stopped behind. He tugs and twists his cap and talks to himself and then walks off to his truck.
“Don’t gotta egg, Harlan. Even a jackleg like that. Never know the day he’s bringing.”
“That guy thinks he’s doing you a favor ’cause he’s
white
and he’s coming in here.”
The man revs and guns the truck, tires spinning mad and screaming out of the lot and onto Lamar, but peeling out is the same as slinking off if you don’t return to bash the store. Huddy looks over at KayKay. Everybody’s been eyeing everyone the past minute, but KayKay’s drawn a hood around her, paying no mind save to the mirror bouncing back the necklace, her hand to her throat. Huddy wonders if the storm even registered. Maybe a hothead with a gun is just an ordinary thing. Or maybe she needed a shootout with bullets ricocheting and ripping the air, gunsmoke and the screams of the dying, before she pried her eyes. Huddy shakes his head. The lights of her world have darkened except for the rainbow flying off the necklace. He kind of admires the focus. “Yeah,” she says, her fingers going down to circle the red pendant like a lockpicker working the knob. “My mother might have something to trade for this.”
“Mister Yewell, Huddy Marr again. Calling ’cause I really think you gonna wanna get a jump on this Winchester.” Huddy hangs up, checks his watch and frowns. He can feel the low vibration of the jackhammer from the next building. Nothing can mask it. Try to cover it with stereo music and it would still thump in the background.
“You can trust me with jewelry,” Harlan says, nodding. “I know how to loosen the ladies. I know their material instinct. Build a rapport.”
“Yeah, I seen that.” Huddy remembering Harlan’s running hands and rubdown. “What you gonna do with the men? You gonna pet them, too?”
Harlan smiles. “I tell the ladies it makes ’em look taller and thinner and younger.”
And then they go home and wonder what happened. “You bunking with her tonight?”
Harlan shrugs. “You meet Christie here?”
“Why?” Huddy asks.
“I figure, you sure ain’t meet her square-dancing.”
“She came in once. Shopping.” Which is true, or enough true for Harlan.