Paul Milton saw the guns too and before Camel could react Milton exchanged his butcher knife for the pistol closest to him, that little five-shot .22 magnum, a revolver barely larger than a derringer but deadly enough at close range. He pointed it at Annie, at Camel, then back at Annie … the worst type of person in the world you want pointing a weapon at you, someone who’s frantic, confused, hurt … Paul’s face battered like he’d been in a car wreck, Annie more shocked by her husband’s condition than embarrassed to have been caught by him. “What’s happened to you?” she asked.
“Something terrible,” he said. Unspeakable, he meant.
Camel felt sick to his stomach from the stupidity of what he’d done, leaving his weapons on the counter like that … so totally out of character for him to be careless with firearms, showing off like a teenager for Annie.
And now he faced a man with a gun. Camel knew the standard operating procedure … talk to the guy, put him at ease, ask what he wants, show you’re not a threat. But Camel thought it might be more effective simply to walk over there and gently take the gun away, do it now before the guy gets a taste of control and starts liking it … he obviously isn’t familiar with firearms, Camel could tell by the way he gripped that .22 like he was worried it might explode on its own … just walk over there and take it out of his hand, he’ll probably feel relieved to be rid of it. Of course if Camel’s wrong he gets shot.
Without announcing his intention or looking at the man directly, Camel started in Paul’s direction.
“Stop.”
Camel didn’t.
“STOP!” Paul raised the .22 and squeezed on the trigger causing the hammer to pull back.
Camel stopped. “That’s a double-action revolver,” he said. “No spur on the hammer, no safety … it fires just by pulling back far enough on the trigger.”
Paul had no idea what he was talking about, still holding the trigger in that about-to-fire position.
“All I’m saying is, you want to shoot me, that’s one thing … but if you haven’t made up your mind yet, well then you’re about to shoot me by accident if you don’t ease off on that trigger.”
After a torturous pause the trigger finger relaxed allowing the hammer to reseat itself and Camel to take a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
“I’m her husband,” Paul said more nervous than indignant.
Camel had already figured that part out.
“Paul,” Annie asked again, “what in God’s name happened to you?”
He raised his left hand to his face, blackened, bruised, broken. “You should’ve said what in hell happened to me,” Paul corrected her before looking again at Camel and repeating, this time with emphasis, “I’m her husband.”
Camel thought it odd Annie had married a man so slight and young … maybe Paul looked more substantial before he was injured and when he’s not suffering from lack of sleep and jealousy and rage. His white pants were dirty, work shirt heavily stained, the lenses of his rimless glasses filthy and the earpieces bent wildly out of shape, the right one didn’t even touch his ear, it pointed up and away from Paul’s head.
“I was afraid after last night,” Annie was saying to her husband. “I called you earlier remember? Explained I was here with Teddy? He used to be a policeman, Teddy’s an old friend of the family.”
Camel wished she wouldn’t use his first name … put some distance between us, refer to me by pronouns: this man, he, that guy there.
“You were kissing him,” Paul pointed out to his wife.
Annie said she could explain that though in fact she couldn’t, not to a husband.
“You gave him a blow job.” He wasn’t accustomed to using the words, saying them like a little boy practicing curses.
“No,” Annie insisted.
Paul swung the gun in her direction and pulled on the trigger.
“Hey,” Camel said quietly, causing the .22’s muzzle to come back toward him as he ran a set of calculations … someone unfamiliar with firearms and shooting a two-inch barrel could easily miss even at this close range, then the concussion and recoil might surprise him enough he wouldn’t be able to get off a quick second shot. Camel was about to rush Paul when Annie stepped toward her husband.
“Stay away from me,” Paul told her. “You just don’t care who you sleep with … fuck … do you … all a guy’s got to do is ask, isn’t that right?”
“I’ve never been unfaithful to you.”
His ruined eyes opened wide. “Giving this guy a blow job, that doesn’t count?”
“I didn’t—”
“LIES!” He was shaking now, a real case of the shivers, a shattered man, and although cuckold horns weren’t sprouting from his head you could tell by looking at him that he felt those horny roots spreading out through his brain like hot, living cancer.
“Paul,” Annie said, “whatever’s happened to you out at Cul-De-Sac is affecting your thinking, you’re imagining—”
“Imagining I came in here and found you hugging and kissing him!” He turned toward Camel and spoke with funereal regret. “She gave you a blow job.”
“No,” Camel quietly replied, “that didn’t happen.”
“I know it did!”
“How do you know?” Annie asked. “Your friend with the horse teeth tell you?”
Paul started to explain about the golfer but instead he told Camel, “You know what my ambition was, before I met her, my ambition was to serve God … that’s right, go ahead and laugh.”
“I’m not going to laugh,” Camel said.
“You know what she called me once, she said I was hapless.”
Annie frowned, she didn’t remember it.
“Hapless,” Paul repeated … like a death sentence.
“Oh Paul—”
“Shut up!” His head shook so wildly the eyeglasses were dislodged and seemed about to fly from his face. “Too bad you didn’t come home tonight instead of giving out blow jobs, I could’ve made us rich … I sold my soul to make us rich.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The elephant.”
“The—”
“I found the elephant!”
“What is it?”
“It’s an elephant.”
She tossed her head, Annie was now more angry and frustrated than afraid. “Paul, what are you involved in?”
“I’m not involved in adultery.” When his glasses slipped again, he tried to push them up, then in a fit threw them to the floor. “I’ll kill everybody here!”
“You’re not going to kill anybody,” she told him.
“Why, because I’m hapless?”
“Oh Paul …”
He again aimed the muzzle at her face, again squeezed on the trigger … and each time Camel saw that hammer move it was like his heart stopped in anticipation. “I’m coming over there and getting my revolver back,” he said in an even voice, starting to do exactly that.
Sensing finally that Camel was serious, realizing a conclusion was about to be reached, Paul looked at Annie. “I don’t think I ever really told you how very sorry I am for losing all your money.”
“Paul—”
“Remember what I asked you to remember.”
“What?”
“Remember what I asked you to remember,” he repeated before lowering the pistol and relaxing his shoulders. Paul even managed a sly grin that revealed a blood-ugly space where a tooth had been knocked out.
Days later Camel would recall thinking at the time that Paul was about to say he was sorry, he never intended to shoot anyone. But what he actually did, he suddenly raised the pistol and turned its muzzle up to his own mouth … Camel rushing those last few steps, getting a hand on the revolver’s cylinder but not in time to stop Paul from squeezing the trigger all the way this time, the bullet blowing out his remaining front teeth, exploding into his mouth, exiting the back of his neck in a showy spray of blood, tissue, and bone.