Day 21: Sunlight

Another fictitious time stamp.  Another tough story to write.  And again I run up against limitations in my will and my time.

Sunlight

Lucas stepped into the bus, the gun heavy in his bag. He shoved the fare card into the reader by the driver. The reader sucked the card in and spit it back out again. Lucas took his seat.

Two chunky guys sat in the back of the bus. Lucas couldn't help but listen to their conversation.

“Yeah, my boss cut my bonus,” the first guy said. The first guy was a little bit heavy, wore a green polo shirt and tan slacks. His dark brown hair was cut in a straight line across his forehead. Lucas could see this guy sitting in a chair in the kitchen with his mother giving him a bowl cut before he put on his polo shirt over the t-shirt with the scraps of hair on it. Then the guy went to work making copies.

“So he screwed you over,” the second guy said. The second guy was heavier, wore a t-shirt and shorts, looked like he was about eighteen years old, and had medium-length hair that curved away from his face at its tips. So this guy went to Great Clips in the suburbs and said “business in front, party in the back,” half-ironically because he didn't want to say “give me a mullet.”

“Well, he took a hit on this too. He has to sell his house in New Jersey,” Bowl Cut said.

Sloppy Mullet said, “oh, so he really screwed up.”

“He has, like, two houses. The country house, up in Connecticut, is everything you want from a country house. Lots of space, amazing views. But anyhow, he personally guaranteed the loans on the company, and then things went pfft.”

“He should have done his due diligence.”

Lucas wondered why Sloppy Mullet was using phrases like “due diligence” if he was eighteen. Maybe he wasn't eighteen. But why did he have such a crappy hair cut?

“He did his due diligence,” Bowl Cut was saying, “but this was 2007 and everybody expected the market to keep going up.”

“So he really screwed up,” said Sloppy Mullet.

“Well, he's going to have to sell his house in Jersey. He's living with his mother.”

“So he's fucked.”

“He's going to have to pay about five hundred thousand of his own money. But his place in New Jersey is still worth about a million, so..”

“He screwed you over.”

“Well, I don't get as big a bonus,” said Bowl Cut.

A bonus! Lucas got it the second time he heard the word. These slobs worked for some kind of high tech company or Wall Street bullshit. At least, Bowl Cut did. No telling why he hung out with this other loser.

“He cut your bonus? That's bullshit,” said Sloppy Mullet.

“Well, I don't like it, of course.”

And it was Lucas' stop. He got off.

Shaw didn't want him to bring a gun. Shaw said why take the risk, Bloomberg wants to make it a crime to carry a handgun if you are drunk, what do you think that means if you're carrying when you commit a felony B&E?

Lucas shifted the bag to his other shoulder. It wasn't really that heavy but he wanted to even his shoulders out so he didn't end up walking crooked when he turned fifty.

He walked up the street. Pretty neighborhood. Trees arched out over the bluestone sidewalk. Sun shone through the trees. Lots of black-painted iron railings. Wish there was a bus up the cross street.

Lucas felt a little like taking a crap, or eating a candy bar. Something to relieve his anxiety. If he could find something sweet to eat, that would settle his gut. Maybe make him feel better.

Lucas took care not to stare at the flicker of light coming through the trees. That would be work but it would be the wrong way to feel better.

On the corner there was a store. He grabbed a Snickers and paid for it. He ate while he walked.

This could go any kind of ways. Shaw said it was easy, go in, grab the papers, no one would be there, make it look like guys broke in looking for computers and expensive stuff and couldn't find anything. Then get out. Easy. But Lucas knew it could go any kind of ways.

He threw the used up Snickers wrapper on the sidewalk. And got about five feet before he heard his Mom's voice in his head. She didn't even have to say words. He stopped, and some guy in chinos and a sweater ran into him.

“What the hell, man!” The guy didn't even say it in a mean way, just like Lucas had surprised him.

Lucas mumbled sorry and stepped around the guy and picked up the Snickers wrapper. Then he walked to the corner, balling it up in his hand. Then he threw the wrapper into the wire basket on the corner.

He got to the place where Shaw said to meet. No Shaw. Lucas leaned against the neat line of bricks that went all the way up the side of the building. Looking down the street while the fingers of one hand felt the rough surface of the bricks and the fingers of the other hand slipped inside the bag and felt the cool metal frame of the gun.

His stomach felt better but only a little bit. If he didn't need the money Lucas would be running down the street right now, all the way back to his Grandma's apartment where he would sit on the sofa and get high, just a little bit high, and watch Rockford Files with Andre.

But Lucas didn't have the heart to sell on the corner and he didn't have the right way of talking to sell in a store. And he wanted to take Sharisse Harris out to Masa. Lucas wasn't sure he would like to eat at Masa, but Sharisse Harris wouldn't even look at a scrawny little white boy like him if he didn't have the ways and means to take her there.

Where was Shaw? Lucas looked up and down the street trying to look like he wasn't looking up and down the street. He felt his stomach trying to sit outside his body. He willed it to jump back in and stop playing around.

The gun came from his father's house, in Connecticut. Lucas' father didn't know he had it. Lucas' father didn't even know that he had visited last week. Lucas didn't even have to break into the house, because he remembered that his dad kept the gun in the garage. After not seeing his dad for five years, Lucas was glad that he'd remembered right.

The sounds of the street had moved away from him. Like a pane of glass had come down between him and the street. His face tingled a bit. Lucas moved his head around, trying to hear better.

“Hey.” Shaw stood in front of him, looking down the street as if he, Shaw, were just talking to himself.

The pane of glass evaporated. The world sounded normal again.

Lucas looked the other way down the street and said “hey” back. They weren't supposed to know each other.

Shaw pressed the buzzer for the doctor's office on the first floor. They buzzed him in without even asking for his name.

After five minutes, Lucas walked up to the door and pushed the button for the doctor's office on the sixth floor. The buzzer sounded, the door went clunk, and Lucas went in.

No cameras in the ground-floor hallway, just faded industrial carpet and rub marks along the walls. A dying plant by the elevator. The hallway smelled of old people and dentist's office.

Lucas could see the car arrive through the porthole in the elevator door. He pulled the door open, got in, and pressed six. The door slid shut, and the old people smell got stronger.

The real estate office took up the entire sixth floor. Lucas could see that Shaw had already turned on the lights. For some reason, this made him breathe a little easier.

He walked into the office. Sun spilled through the trees outside the windows. Expensive-looking art on the walls. A big oak desk in front of the door. The desk was very clean.

“Oh, hello,” said the man behind the desk.

Shaw stood behind the man behind the desk. He said, “Hey, Lukey. How are you?”

Lucas stood still. Shaw looked at the bag over Lucas' shoulder, and raised his eyebrows. Lucas stared back. Shaw repeated the gesture, and Lucas gave an involuntary half-nod as he felt his stomach sitting outside his body again.

“Lukey, why don't you show Mr. Ellis what you brought? I know I told you not to bring it, but that was because I didn't expect Mr. Ellis to be here. Mr. Ellis doesn't understand how important our business is. So go ahead, show him.”

Shaw spoke nicely but it sounded like a command.

Lucas slipped his hand inside the bag and felt the cool metal frame of the gun.

Shaw looked at him encouragingly.

This is it, thought Lucas. This is really going down.

Lucas curled his fingers around the grip of the gun, laying his trigger finger alongside the barrel like his father had taught him. He slid it out of the bag.

The man's eyes widened, just a little bit. Beads of sweat stood out on his brow. I thought that shit only happened in movies, Lucas thought. Then Lucas felt a trickle down his own back.

And then he heard his Mom's voice in his head again, and Lucas thought I don't want to be here, I don't want to do this, I don't, I don't.

Shaw stood next to Lucas now, and slid the gun from his hands. This has gotten way out of control, Lucas thought.

The sun sparkled outside the window, and Lucas knew what to do. He stared at it. He stared at it until the pane of glass came down over the world, and his stomach sat outside him, and everything went very far away.

Lucas could just hear Ellis beginning to shout before he lost himself in the seizure.

(C) 2011 Michael Bernstein