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Rick slapped the steering wheel. “Of course! I do it all the time! Is that supposed to destroy you or something?”
Mickey just looked at the floor mats or out the window. He jumped out when Rick parked in front of his place, the sack of cold pizza clamped under his arm. He didn't say good-bye.
Walter Herdzina moved up to the front seat and brought the seat belt over to its catch. “Whew! What an evening, huh?”
“I feel like I've run twenty miles.”
Walter crossed his legs and jiggled his shoe until Rick drove onto Walter's driveway, where he shook Rick's hand and suggested they do this again sometime, and also wished him good luck in getting his business out of the starting gate.
The light was on in the upstairs bedroom of the Bozacks’ blue Colonial home. Jane had switched the lights off downstairs. Rick let himself in with
the milk-box key and hung up his coat. He opened the refrigerator door and peered in for a long time, and then Rick found himself patting his pockets for cigarettes. He went to the dining-room breakfront and found an old carton of Salems next to the Halloween cocktail napkins.
He got a yellow ruled tablet and a pen from the desk and sat down in the living room with a lit cigarette. He printed VENTURE at the top. He drew a line down the center of the paper and numbered the right-hand side from one to twelve. After a few minutes there, Jane came down the stairs in her robe.
“Rick?”
“What?”
“I wanted to know if it was you.”
“Who else would it be?”
“Why don't you come up? I'm only reading magazines.”
“I think I'd like to just sit here for a while.”
“In the dark?”
He didn't speak.
“Are you smoking?”
“Yep. I was feeling especially naughty.”
She was silent. She stood with both feet on the same step. “You're being awfully mysterious.”
“I just want to sit here for a while. Can I do that? Can I just sit here for a while?”
Jane climbed back up the stairs to their bedroom.
Rick stared at the numbered page. Why quit the team? Why risk the stress? Why give up all those Cookies?
If pressed against the wall, he'd say, “I just don't feel like it now.”
The Boogeyman
The Corporal pushes aside the green case of machetes and six crates of assorted shoes and moves to the lightless rear of the pawnshop. Ancient muskets and spotted brown swords are hanging from the ceiling. The Corporal peers at one coat for a long time and then points to it. The pawnshop owner looks up and nods. He says in his own language that the coat is not only a bargain but exactly what a good soldier needs.
“How much is it?”
The man creeps through the junk underfoot and removes the red coat from its hanger. It appears to be only a helicopter pilot's jacket made of resplendent red silk, but the man says, “Yes, plenty important coat.” The pawnshop owner flips the coat over. Embroidered across the top is the phrase “Live Free or Die,” and below that is a green dragon with wings sewn in rainbow colors. Curling out of its mouth are yellow flames.
“Yeah,” the Corporal says. “That's what I want. How much is it?”
The little man squints his eyes at the Corporal. “I give it to you, soldier.”
The Corporal drinks a green beer and swivels on a high bar stool to tell a girl in net stockings stories about how he split a private's lip clean past his nose with only one punch, how he rolled grenades into a sergeant's tent, how he shot a machine gun overhead and then walked inside the anarchy of slugs pelting down like rain.
