(2004) Citizen Vince Read Free Page A

here, Lenny?” Vince repeats.
    “I came for my credit cards, man.”
    “It’s Tuesday morning.”
    “I know that.”
    “We do this on Friday.”
    “I know that, too.”
    “Then why are you here on Tuesday?”
    Finally, Len withdraws the unshaken hand. “So you ain’t got my credit cards, that what you’re saying?”
    “I’m saying it doesn’t matter what I have. We do this on Friday. I don’t understand why you’re even here.”
    “I just thought you might have cards today.”
    “Well, I don’t.”
    “Okay.” Len nods and checks his rearview mirror. “That’s cool.”
    Vince straightens up and cranes his neck to see down the alley. “Why are you doing that?”
    “Doing what?”
    “Looking down the alley.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Is someone down there?”
    “Where?”
    Vince points down the alley. “Back there. You keep checking your rearview.”
    Len puts his sunglasses back on. “You’re paranoid, Vince.”
    “Yeah. I’m paranoid.” Vince starts to walk away. “I’ll see you Friday.”
    “I won’t be there Friday. That’s what I had to tell you. I’m sending a new guy.”
    Vince turns back—cold. “What do you mean, a new guy?”
    “I mean a guy who’s new, as opposed to a guy who’s old.”
    “Yeah, I got that part. Who is he?”
    “Just a guy to help out on my end. His name is Ray. You’d like him.”
    Vince walks back to the open car window. “Since when do you have an end, Lenny? You buy shit with my credit cards. Since when is that an end? ”
    “Hell’s the matter with you? Just meet with this guy, Vince. Relax.” Len presses the button to roll up his window. “You’re losing it, man.” It’s the last thing Vince hears before the Cadillac drives away. The car pauses at the corner—a wink from the brake lights—and turns, Vince alone in the alley, watching his own breath. He looks down the alley once more, then starts for the donut shop.
    Vince hates alleys. Jimmy Plums got piped in an alley outside a strip club when he went off to piss. They made it look like a robbery, but everyone knew that Jimmy got taken off for a deep skim on some jukeboxes in Howard Beach. So what’s that? Forty-one? Or forty-two? Oh, great. Now you’ve lost count.
     
    AND THE DONUTS? It works like this: Vince gets to Donut Make You Hungry at 4:45. He goes to the basement first and puts whatever side money he’s made in a lockbox he hides down there. Back upstairs, his assistant, Tic, has been at work an hour already, turning on lights, mixing up doughs according to Vince’s recipes, firing the oven and deep fryers, taking frostings out of the walk-in to thaw. Tic is eighteen or nineteen—Vince isn’t sure—with long thin hair he constantly throws back—Vince has never seen him use the big-handled comb in his back pocket—droopy eyes, and a jittery sort of energy that never seems to flag. Every night, Tic drinks and smokes pot until three in the morning, has breakfast, goes to the donut shop, finally goes to sleep when he gets off work at ten A.M ., wakes up at six P.M ., and starts the whole thing over.
    The second Vince walks through the door, Tic starts talking.
    “Love me some maple bars, Mr. Vince. Love ’em like a naughty girlfriend.”
    Vince has a locker in back. Inside are his work clothes and the paperback book that he reads on his break—he’s struggling with a novel called The System of Dante’s Hell. He opens the book, reads a couple of cryptic sentences, and puts it back. Slips out of his slacks and black dress shirt and into white coveralls.
    “Wanna go steady with a maple bar,” Tic is saying. “Wanna take a maple bar to the prom. Wanna take a maple bar home to meet my folks.”
    Vince washes his hands.
    “Wanna marry a maple bar and have little maple-bar babies and go to their little donut baseball games, have slumber parties with all their little bear-claw, cinnamon-twisty friends…”
    Vince used to track Tic’s rants and even to contribute, but