A Stranger in This World by Kevin Canty Read Free Book Online

your car?” the drunk asks Bobby.
    Bobby’s still thinking, but she can’t tell what. The night around them is loud with wind, an onshore breeze, as if the ocean didn’t want any part of them, didn’t even want to think about them. The drunk is wearing knife-pleated synthetic pants and a black cloth jacket with a lot of snaps and attachments, like the ones that pit crews wear at stock-car races, although to Tina he just registers as one word: asshole.
    “I tell you,” the drunk says. “That woke me right up. I was about falling asleep. Look, I can pay you for your car—let’s just do this private, OK?”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I give you a couple of hundred bucks, you drive away, we don’t tell anybody about it. I mean, if I’ve got to breathe into the tube, I’m going way downtown.”
    “What kind of money?”
    “Like I say, a couple hundred bucks.” He glances at the Volvo, missing hubcaps, torn seats (and in the moment of his glance Tina sees his contempt for the two of them, how itpains him to even talk). “I mean, I’m sorry, but we’re not talking about a damn Mercedes or something.”
    “It’s a foreign car,” Bobby says.
    “I could maybe go three hundred, three fifty. You’d best make up your mind, though—the cops show up, this deal won’t make any difference to anybody.”
    “Shut the fuck up,” Bobby says. “I didn’t run into your car.”
    A mistake, Tina thinks: she sees the anger kindling in the eyes of the drunk, bright for a moment, then folding into their heavy lids, pretending to be sleepy. He folds his arms and leans heavily against the front fender of his car, which bows under his weight.
    “All right then,” the drunk says. “I guess we’ll all just sit here and wait for the cops.”
TINA CLOSES HER EYES
    Pictures from her childhood: a tan stuffed horse; a picnic when she was small, when the grass in the park grew long and lush and green and her aunt teased her about how pretty she was becoming and the wind blew through the leaves of the tall eucalyptus trees, the air smelled like wet earth; a new white dress; a new tiny watch with a pink watchband.
A LIGHT, PRICKLING SWEAT
    “Three-fifty?” Bobby asks. “Is that what we’re talking about?”
    The drunk smiles slowly. “I thought I said three hundred. Idon’t know, man, I’m drunk. I’m liable to say damn near anything.”
    “You want to do this or not?”
    “Course I do—wouldn’t you want to stay out of jail if you could? It only makes sense.”
    Still he doesn’t budge, rooted to the fender of the blue Chevrolet while the ocean wind blows through the streetlights and the telephone poles. He seems to be deciding something.
    “Well, shit,” he finally says. He turns to Tina. “You mind driving? I’m a little fucked up still.”
    “Where are we going?” she asks.
    “Money’s at my place. I don’t carry that kind of cash with me, do you?”
    Bobby says, “You didn’t tell me you didn’t have the money.”
    “I didn’t say I didn’t have it,” the drunk says, grinning. “I said I didn’t have it here. Either way, though, any way you want it.”
    Tina senses a sinister turn to this conversation: suddenly the drunk seems sly, in control. Tina thinks that she would rather be anywhere else than here (longing for the neutrality of work, of television, the empty, clean light of the supermarket).
    “She can drive,” Bobby says. “I’ll follow you. How far away is it anyway?”
    “Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go,” the sly drunk sings. “The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifting snow-o!”
    “Shut the fuck up,” Bobby says.
    Tina sees the anger start into the drunk’s eyes again, then quickly stored (for future reference, future use) as his eyes slide to half-mast again, as he thrusts a meaty hand towardBobby. “My name is Lyle,” he says. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
LYLE
    He slumps in the passenger seat,