Back into the loft, gentle buzz from Carlos’s mail-order-seed-grown dope, bills and junk mail in hand, careful not to stub his foot, Hawk flicks on the dim red light over the sink. A roach walks slowly in his direction with disregard for human hostility toward its kind, as if it had been lonely in Hawk’s absence. No new messages on his answering machine. Only one message on Hawk’s Madonna marker board: DRANO!!
Carla’s handwriting from before he left.
Sure, he’ll clean the kitchen at least until it shines. His first act is to erase the marker board. Hawk writes down the number off his Amtrak ticket and sticks it in his pocket so he can lay a buck on it with Phil the Pot after he hands the man the four thousand he owes him and says, “We’re even.”
Hawk sets down the bag of cleaning stuff he bought on the counter—including one large bottle of Drano—and opens a letter from Con Ed that threatens to cut off his electricity and a past-due rent bill, both addressed to Sammy. His grimy button-selling seersucker hangs over a kitchen chair where he left it next to the table. After the train ride from New Orleans he’d just washed his face, put down the plastic bag with his few things from the convention, and subwayed down to Carla’s.
Now Hawk loads the jacket pockets with the four packets of Sammy’s cash. He’ll settle with Armand first. Then? Maybe he won’t pay Philly entirely, since there’s no pressure to do so. No, it would be good to have his accounts settled. It’s not like if Hawk returned half of Sammy’s money to the safe he’d be half as guilty.
A ragged green film rings his sink. A moth flits in the reddish light over the rusty faucet. He can scrub the place good before Carla and Zoey come over, work the sink a bit with the Drano and his plunger. A surge of hope rises in Hawk at the thought of Carla bringing Mama Mia’s pepperoni pizza and then the two of them sipping Jack into the night. It’s a good thing too that Carla’s bringing pizza because he doesn’t have much to eat in the loft. There are only a few boxes of macaroni and cheese in the cupboard. Nothing in the fridge but some dried-out habañero chili peppers, half an economy-size bologna, drying Wonder Bread, and two jars of Hellmann’s mayonnaise. One is overgrown with molds and he trashes it. By refrigerator light he unscrews the other, sniffs, whoa. Then he senses something lurking in the dark, the air nerved and twitchy, and wipes his hands on the Con Ed cut-off notice.
And listens, jar reddish in hand, scared to turn on the overhead or remain in the dark. He spreads mayonnaise and chops a chili pepper fine and sprinkles it on the bread. Just the hum of fixtures and the refrigerator, a slow drip somewhere. Finally he pulls the kitchen light string, slips out of his sneakers, peels off his crusty socks, and feels his feet sticky on the linoleum.
Then he hears a blast of compressed air and turns.
It’s Ginsu in a cutoff jean shirt and another guy, who’s massively freckled and has bushy red hair and a narcish look. Ginsu’s cheeks are full, limp balloon in hand.
“Follow the yellow brick road,” he says in a tokey voice.
Hawk just stands there, mayo jar in hand.
“So Mickey Mouse,” Nelson says. “What’s going down?”
“Not much, Nelson.”
“Well shoot, maybe me and Fitz here should start something.”
“Nelson,” Hawk says, exhaling and lowering the jar. “You scared the shit out of me. What do you guys want coming up here?”
“I told you I’d be back for you and I always keep my word,” Nelson says. “How much did I borrow from you last time?”
“Forget about it,” Hawk says. “I never counted that pocket money. You guys want a sandwich? How about a drink?”
Nelson peers into the open fridge, shakes his head.
“Well fuck me hard. You got two half-drunk bottles of Jack Daniels and no beer for chasers?”
Fitz is still eyeballing Hawk, his eyes sunken in his face like M&M’s pressed in freckled dough.
“Go ahead, make your sandwich,” Nelson says. “You need a knife to cut it with?”
“That’s okay,” Hawk says, opening an Amtrak utensils packet.
Nelson frowns as Hawk spreads mayo with the plastic knife and then arranges a few slices of bologna and crunched habañeros on the bread, heart racing.
“What the fuck kind of sandwich is that?”
“Comfort food,” Hawk says, raising the sandwich and taking a bite.
Nelson can’t stand still, wets a strand of his hair with a finger and pastes it behind his ear. Drugs? Or Tourette’s syndrome?
“These Zoey’s?” Nelson asks.
He pulls a drawing from behind a magnetic Ronald Reagan in a space helmet on the fridge. It’s a picture with several trees and four-legged creatures with speckles on them, done in watercolor. Another with a two-legged shape with a yellow safari hat labeled “Hawk,” with a caption bubble saying, “I am a Freakazoid and Zoey is my Dancing Star.” Hawk remembers her drawing them using his back as an easel.
“My daughter made these,” Nelson says. “Not bad, eh?”
“Yeah. A real artist.”
Fitz shrugs. His fat, pawlike hands are blotched with freckles. To Hawk he looks like a huge child who’d have fat-kid bosoms under his shirt. Now the man picks up one of the spools of duct tape that are always lying around for doing the crease on folding boards or boxing up Sammy’s junk. Fitz twirls the tape around his index finger.
“She’s got talent,” Nelson says. “I guess she gets it from her mother.”
Nelson has a drawing in his hand and walks over to Hawk, swatting a drifting July Fourth balloon out of his way.
“So my girl puts your name in her drawings?” and then sarcastically, “Hawk.”
“It don’t mean nothing. We were just having fun.”
“What?” Nelson says, and in two steps he clamps Hawk in a headlock, ridges of his Rolex pressed on Hawk’s neck and the blood rushing to his face, the guy squeezing him like a lemon. Then Nelson grips the back of Hawk’s neck and hurls him headlong into the refrigerator. Echo of whiteness, blank, and his good cheek against the marker board as he lifts himself up. He feels his eye swelling, and a stream of blood on his face. The eye had just about healed and now it’s open again. He bleeds too easily, no doubt about it.
Hawk sits there on one knee, shaking it off. The flag on Nelson’s veined forearm seems to pulse. He’s definitely not a man Hawk can mix it with.
Fitz picks up a Statue of Liberty visor, the Lady rising in green plastic above a row of lights. He examines the thing and then attaches the battery cord. The colored lights start blinking over his pink face as he puts the visor on.
“Finish your sandwich,” Nelson says.
Hawk starts to bend to pick up the fallen bologna and peppers and then just straightens up and says, “What do you guys want? You gonna kick my ass, just do it.”
“A weird, greasy, twitchy little fuck, ain’t he?” Nelson says.
“What’s all this stuff?” Fitz says to Hawk. “You a thief? Fence?”
Hawk shakes his head. The visor flickers watery colors over Fitz’s face.
“Some kinda penny ante con man,” Nelson says. “Last time I saw this guy he had a pocketful of bogus IDs.”
“I’m a salesman,” Hawk says. “A vendor. I sell sausages on the street. Other kinds of merchandise from the cart. You know, buttons, hats, T-shirts.”
“Fence, thief, salesman, what’s the difference?” Fitz says.
“A thief just takes things,” Hawk says.
“You got permission from Disney to sell this stuff?”
“Last I checked Uncle Walt was doing fine.”
“You imagine Carla banging a guy like this?”
“Hey, some women prefer a hot dog to filet mignon, okay?” Fitz says with a shrug. Then turns to Hawk. “What kind of valuables you got around here?”
“Look around,” Hawk says. “Oh, and help yourself.”
“You got any money?” Fitz asks.
“‘Just enough to eat and play horses with,” Nelson says, and fingers the seersucker jacket over the chair. He kneels and looks face-to-face at the buttons with George Bush’s grimace of a smile on the lapels.
“How much you sell some piece of garbage like this for?” Nelson says, fingering the buttons.
“Deuce, maybe,” Hawk says then swallows.
“Two dollars for this piece of shit?”
“Sure, people buy ‘em. Don’t ask me why. I’m not a licensed psychiatrist.”
Nelson picks up the seersucker by the collar.
He reaches into the inside pockets, turns the chair around that’s holding the jacket.