Four and a Half Horsemen

II

           

How in the holy hell did I get myself in this situation? Sure I was a pretty good thief and all, and sure I didn't really have anything better to do, but there's a lot of things I could have done with my time that didn't involve stealing a book bound in human skin from some recluse in upstate New York. Things like, baking a cobbler, for example. The neighborhood loved my cobbler. Whenever we'd have a block party they'd always ask for it. It was peach. Apparently people in the suburbs of New Jersey really love them some peach cobbler. Anyway, this book with the skin, what the hell right? I don't even wanna think about how they got the skin for the binding in the first place. I was supposed to stand around in this damn monkey suit waiting for something big and distracting to happen so that I could sneak upstairs and try and find the library. Or maybe the office. Who knows, I don't actually know this guy well enough to be able to tell if he's an office guy or a library guy. Coke or Pepsi, you know what I mean?

            I whistled something unspecific as I waited for a crash or a bang or some other onomatopoeia. While i was standing around, I decided to shoot the old shit with some of the circus clowns standing around nearby, to see if I could get any information out of them. I got champagne from one. Score. One of them was pretty cute. She had a lot going on for her, and she knew how to dress to attract the eye too, her dress was taken in /just/ enough. I saw her eyeing me down, even though she didn't think i could, and i knew i was in. I just had to booze her up a little. Her boyfriend saw her staring and for the next ten or fifteen minutes looked very downtrodden. That's right, little boy.

            A little kid came up to me. Probably ten or so. I don't know what they were doing here but they were pretty cute, I guess. I mean not that I like to look at little kids like some kind of pervert or something, what are you trying to say? Anyway, I asked her what she was doing here.

            "Hey, kid," I said, over the jazz and the shit shooting. It took a few times for her to hear me, but once she did, I continued, "What're you doing here? This doesn't seem like the kind of place for a kid." She said something, but I couldn't hear her, so I leaned my ear closer to her.

            "I'm here with my mom," she yelled, practically busting my ear drum. I rubbed my ear until it stopped ringing, "sorry mister!" she said. I bet you're sorry you little punk. I've never pulled a knife on a kid because I'm not that kind of guy (although I am the kind of guy that sells drugs, and whether or not I've ever sold drugs to a kid is something we can discuss later) but I swear, I mean I'm telling you man, I was on my way to being that kind of guy. Now that I think back on it I really didn't have any reason to get mad, but even though I knew that, I got mad anyway. I guess I had some kind of image to uphold to this mysterious kid I'd never see again. She tugged on my arm so I'd lean back down again, "are you with your mom too?" she asked me. Oh boy. That brought up some stuff.

            I was taken back to my mom's old Roadmaster, with a twin mattress lying across the back seat where the two of us would cram and catch a few hours before the law found us parked out back behind the shopping center. I got really good at convincing people to give me more meat on my fast food without having to pay extra. I consider it a special skill to this day. I also got pretty good at finding the ritziest looking guy in a place and nabbing his wallet and his watch without him even realizing i was in the building. That's how we bought a lot of our food and gas.

            Mom was sleeping again. or at least, that's what i hoped she was doing, because the alternative answer was a lot scarier, and meant we were gonna have a lot less money for food that day. I poked at her to see if she moved at all, since she was a pretty light sleeper and would move pretty much any time you poked her. She didn't move. I knew what that meant. It meant she had gone to see her boyfriend again, and that he had given her that stuff again, and she had used all of our money to get it and now she was sleeping all day. I got so mad. I got really mad, I mean practically mad enough to spit. I took her by the shirt collar, sat on her lap, and shook her as hard as i could, tears forming in my eyes.