“See, if I don’t keep that gun away from me, I’m afraid I’ll end up shooting someone. Not someone robbing the store, but someone else, a stranger, maybe. I don’t trust myself anymore. I think I may be a little crazy or something. I don’t know how it’s happened, but I think sometimes I lose control of myself. Especially when it comes to women, you know? I get so pissed off at the world, so angry, that I’m liable to kill somebody by accident if I don’t keep that gun away from me. It’s not women, really, but they’ve got something to do with it. Somehow.”
“I’ve worked hard for this. For over fifteen years I’ve been working hard. I got an ulcer. Did you know I got an ulcer? My ass is bleeding too. Did you know that? I’m thirty-three years old, and I got holes in my stomach and a bleeding asshole. And now my epilepsy is coming back. I had two fucking seizures this month. First in five years. You figure it out.”
“I don’t want to kill anybody, see. I didn’t want to kill that nigger that robbed the store. I don’t know even how I did it. Or why. I knew, the second time I shot at him, that he wasn’t going to kill me anymore. I’d already at least winged him. I knew that. The worst he was going to do by then was get the hell out of there. But I killed him anyhow.”
“I’m not pissed at you, Bob. I just got a lot to worry about lately. I hate my fucking wife. I wish she’d just get herself royally fucked, have a hundred orgasms, and run off with the tennis pro or somebody. I don’t even like my kid anymore. All she does is sit up there in her room getting stoned and listening to records of guys with safety pins stuck in their cheeks. I don’t know why the hell I’m even doing this, working this hard. I should be like you.”
“It’s probably only a temporary hard time, Eddie. It’ll pass. It’s probably the recession. You know, from the energy crisis and the fucking Arabs and all, and fucking Carter. It’ll pass. You just gotta hold on to what you got for a while.”
“Yeah.” They are silent for a moment, and then Eddie says, “If you leave that gun here, Bob, I’m just gonna hafta haul it back in to the store tomorrow morning and put it right back where it was.”
“I got to keep that gun away from me.”
“The gun stays at the store.”
Bob looks down at the table and tries to make out the shape of the gun, but it’s too dark now. “No, I got to stay away from the gun. At least for a while. I’m too shaky these days.”
“The gun stays at the store.”
Bob says nothing, shifts his position in the chair, then says, “Well, I guess I quit.”
Eddie remains silent for a few seconds. Finally, he sighs and says, “Okay. Fine. Quit. Just fucking quit.”
“I mean it, Eddie. I quit.”
“Yeah, I hear you. You can pick up your pay tomorrow after noon at my office downtown. My secretary’ll have it ready for you by three. Don’t even come in to work tomorrow. I’ll get a temporary for a few days. By Wednesday I’ll have a replacement full time out there. That’s the least of my worries right now, replacing you.”
Bob stands up and faces his brother’s lumpy shape in the chair below him. “Okay, then. No hard feelings?”
“No. No hard feelings. I think you’re an asshole, of course. Worse, actually. Since you got a new baby and no job and probably no savings. But no, Bob, no hard feelings.”
“I’ll get another job. I can do lotsa stuff.”
“Yeah. Jobs’re falling outa trees around here.”
“Listen, I’m sorry.”
Eddie doesn’t respond, and Bob takes a step away. “I mean it, Eddie,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not,” Eddie says, his voice coming from the darkness. “You’re not sorry. You’re glad.”
“Well, I’ll be seeing you.”
“Yeah.”
Bob leaves, walking through the living room to the carpeted front hall, out the huge oaken door and down the long flagstone walkway to the street. As he walks, he listens for the sound of the gun, but it doesn’t come. It’s not until he reaches his car and has got in and slammed the door that he realizes he has been listening for the gun, and then he realizes why, for he knows that if his brother can’t find his way out of this maze he’s built, he will put the barrel of the gun into his mouth and pull the trigger and blow off the top of his head.
Bob turns the ignition key, starts the motor, and drives away.
