Kansas City Noir Read Free Page B

Tim says. Make some dinner.
    What’re you going to have? Lyle says.
    I don’t know.
    What you say? Bill says.
    Fuck you, Bill, Tim says, and he and Lyle laugh. It’s not as funny as the first time he said it. It’s starting to get old but I can’t help smiling a little.
    Gene and I had dinner together one night. I met him in the parking lot behind the Sun Fresh Market off Southwest Trafficway. I didn’t know then that he was sleeping in his car. Just ran into him there and he asked me if I was hungry. Come to think of it, I said.
    A bunch of clothes were heaped in the backseat of his station wagon. An old rusty job with wood paneling peeling off the doors. He had rigged a towel to take the place of a window that would no longer roll up. Laundry day, he said, explaining away the clothes.
    We drove out of the parking lot to Mill Street and followed the curve into Westport to a little joint called The Corner. Some bums who might have been hippies years ago stood on Broadway wiping down car windows at a red light while the drivers waved them off. Gene and I sat down and a waitress cleared our table. I ordered a burger. Gene had the meatloaf special.
    The Corner closed not long after that. A big For Rent sign hangs above the front door along with the name of some real estate company. I went by it the other day and noticed the table where Gene and I had sat surrounded by other empty tables made all the more empty by the emptiness of the place.
     
    Evening
    Fran’s mother sits with me in the kitchen. Her perfume gives me a headache. I stare at her hair all puffy and piled up on her head and bleached so blond it’s almost white. She twirls the lazy Susan with a finger, touches the corner of her mouth, and then goes back to spinning the lazy Susan, her finger skating along on a film of lipstick she rubbed off.
    What’s it taste like, your lipstick?
    Why would you want to know? What kind of question is that for a man to ask?
    I don’t know, it just came to me, I want to say, but don’t. One night, I was walking to the shitter and mortars started coming in. We were always being mortared. This is the real deal, baby! someone yelled. And then, the blasts lifted an eighteen-year-old private into the air, tossing him backward like a rag into all this dirt and noise and smoke; his blood sprayed over my face. I can still taste it.
    Where’s Fran? her mother says.
    School, I say.
    Have you thought of going back to school?
    No.
    Is it your plan for Fran to do all the work while you sit around? Fran’s mother says. Have you thought about being more than an electrician?
    No, Mrs. Lee, I haven’t.
    Well, it shows.
    I apply a piece of Scotch tape to a corner above the cabinets where the wallpaper is peeling.
    Fran’s mother gets up and walks to the sink. I listen to the linoleum creak beneath her shoes.
    When do you plan to clean these? she says of the dishes. Or are you waiting for them to pile up to the ceiling?
    I throw the tape down and face her. She steps back, a little aren’t-I-clever smirk on her face, and I turn the hot water on in the sink and pour in some soap. I find a sponge beneath the sink and start wiping down a plate. My fingertips turn white from squeezing the plate so hard. A littler harder and it would break. I want to feel it break but I ease up; put the plate in the wrack. I start cleaning another one.
    You two should get married, Fran’s mother goes.
    I keep washing the plate.
    You’re living together, she says. Not having a job hasn’t stopped you from doing that. Married, you’d at least be official. It would show responsibility. Now wouldn’t that be something?
    I rinse the plate, set it in the rack. I lean on the sink, arms stiff.
    I’m leaving, I say.
    You’re leaving. Where you going?
    Montana.
    Montana. What are you going to do in Montana?
    Work.
    Work. Work here for a change. You think some cowgirl is going to put up with you?
    I raise my hand before she says anything more. There’s this nasal