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“Everybody’s somebody’s fetish,” Kid said. “Maybe I still got hope?”
“That’s what I keep telling Pepper. But he just won’t believe me.”
“I believe it.” Pepper said from his end of the couch. “You just won’t believe you ain’t mine.”
“Oh, I don’t think I’m revealing any embarrassing secrets when I say that you can be very sweet and affectionate once you relax. No, Pepper is just terribly uncomfortable at the idea that anyone could find him attractive. It’s that simple.”
“It ain’t happened that often so I’m what you’d call used to it.” Pepper squinted into the bottom of his cup, rocked up to his feet, and walked to the counter. He gave Bu
“Ow!” Bu
Kid gri
“Why are you two here now, anyway?” Bu
“You trying to kick me out again?” Pepper stooped to open a cabinet and took out another jug which he put on the counter beside the one now empty.
Kid saw four more gallons and decided to leave after this glass. “Where was Nightmare’s gang off to this morning?”
“You said you saw them. How many were there?”
“Twenty, twenty-five maybe,” Kid said.
“Maybe he’s go
“Oh, no!” Bu
“He’s been talking about it for a month, but he wants a whole damn army.”
“Why’s he need so many people?” Kid asked. “What’s Emboriky?”
“Big downtown department store.”
“Lovely things,” Bu
“Nobody’s gotten to it before?”
“Guess not.” Pepper said.
“Maybe just a little,” Bu
“Killed?”
“Somebody leaned out the third-story window,” Pepper said, “and shot the motherfucker dead.” He laughed. “A couple of other people got shot at, who were just passing by. But they didn’t get hurt.”
“Perhaps it’s Mr. Emboriky, protecting his worldly goods.” Bu
“Naw, naw,” Pepper said. “It’s a whole bunch in there. Nightmare’s one of the people who got shot at. He said shots came from lots of places.”
Bu
“You think it’s the sales clerks?” Pepper asked.
“No.” Bu
“Nightmare’s got this real thing about it. He really wants to get in there and see what’s going on. I guess I would too if somebody’d shot at me out the third-story window.”
“You?” Bu
“I think getting your ass full of buckshot is pretty stupid for any reason.”
“Fine!” Bu
“Well, we’ve got Calkins,” Kid said. “He’s a pillar of the community.”
Bu
“You got that church person,” Pepper offered.
“Reverend Amy?” Bu
“Not that church,” Pepper countered. “The other one, over on the other side of the city.”
“You mean the monastery?” Bu
“Yeah, someone mentioned that to me once,” Kid said, and remembered it was Lanya.
“It would be nice to think that, somewhere inside its walls, a truly good person walked and pondered. Can you imagine it? Within the city limits? Perhaps the abbot or the mother superior or whatever they call it? Meanwhile the scorpions play down at the Emboriky.”
“Maybe if you went to the monastery, somebody’d shoot at you too.”
“How sad.” Bu
“Where is this place?” Kid asked; with the memory occurred the fantasy that Lanya, with her curiosity about it, might have gone there.
“I don’t actually know,” Bu
“I heard it’s on the other side of town,” Pepper said. “Only I don’t even know which side of town this is.”
Kid laughed and stood up. “Well, I’m go
“You’re going to go? But honey, I have enough in here for brunch, lunch, high tea, and di
“Come on,” Pepper said. “Take another glass. Bu
“Sorry.” Kid moved his jar from Bu
“I’ll only let you go if you promise me.” Bu
Kid, unsure why, felt his cheeks heat and the rest of his body cool. I can’t have absorbed the custom of reticence so completely in so little time, he thought. And still wanted anxiously and urgently to leave.
Bu
“Yeah. Sure. Thanks.” Kid tugged away from Bu
“Good-bye!” Pepper called from the counter where he’d gone for more wine.
Now the street sign said RUBY and PEARL.
The ladder and the lady in greens were gone.