“Rossiter lives up by the river on Sumner Avenue,” Harry said. “Back towards town.”
Friday was silent.
“What do you think he is?” Harry said, thinking of the guy at the motel. “Thirty? Thirty-two? Mother gone? Father gone when he was a kid? Or Dad plays the tom-tom on Mom when he gets drunk? And Mom bitch-slaps Sonny-Boy, who stomps the dog, which corners the cat? Sits in school with earbuds pounding Death Metal or whatever the fuck they listen to now, doing a little coke, a little meth, a couple of oxys, shrooms on the weekend, doesn’t so much drop out as drift off, flips burgers, chops firewood, cuts grass for rich weekenders before breaking into a house or two and boosting a Marantz PM8004 and selling the nine-hundred-dollar machine for sixty bucks’ worth of crank, popping out a bastard or two or three. How many kids you got, chief? He blinks: Me? Shit, seven, four, who the fuck knows … Runs out of ideas for his new tattoo so he says a big motherfucking eagle ’cause he believes in the U.S. of A, though the Marines turned him down, mopery and flat feet, and the Army doesn’t want him, not after they cop to the track marks on his arms, and he can’t even get a nod from the volunteer fire department, not that he’d apply, too square, Jack, and I got other things going on on a Saturday night, like boosting that sweet cherry-red 1995 Honda Civic, still the most popular stolen car in the country—which is useful knowledge, none of that ‘who signed the Declaration of Independence,’ that ‘who started the Civil War’ shit, as useful as knowing how to turn out some precocious fifteen-year-old with double-Ds and make some trucker’s dreams come true while he’s stuck waiting for a new spider gear set to get shipped thirty miles from East Bumfuck, the closest supplier with a clerk not too stoned to find the right part, while Little Baby Cheeks carburets on her glass pipe, so she’ll be ready to go down, up, sideways, without remembering how many cocks she wilted, and her boyfriend, the Tattooed Wonder, wakes up one morning and almost pukes ’cause the mirror shows him his toothless, wizened father, and he thinks, What the fuck? And the calendar says he’s somehow reached sixty and the last time he combed his hair was fifteen years ago when he thought he was going to get the job at the mill, which shut its doors and moved to China. And now, well, he’s back to cutting rich people’s grass and notices next to him some mook in a black hoodie with these pee-yellow cat eyes, cutting grass with a scythe and smiling as Our Tattooed Friend thinks, Geez, my left arm tingles. No one even sees him fall off the Craftsman seventeen five hp forty-two Shift-on-the-Go Lawn Tractor. RIP.”
Friday glanced sideways at him.
“The guy just got under my skin is all,” Harry said.
“I like your other stories better,” Friday said.
“What other stories?” Harry asked.
A car approached, its brights on. Friday blinked her lights. The approaching car did not dim its brights.
“Keep your brights on,” Harry said. “The son-of-a-bitch isn’t dimming his.”
“Anyway,” Friday said, “there’s no guarantee Rossiter will help.”
“You want a guarantee,” Harry snapped, “buy a toaster.”