Specimen & Other Stories Read Free Page A

warm.”
    “Thank you.”
    “You can let go now.”
    “Sorry.” His mother had always said, you
find what you want in life, you hold onto it tight and never let it
go. He wondered about that sometimes, and why she hadn’t held onto
her own life, instead of spiraling down the drain in a swirl of
cheap wine.
    “I’ve got to get back to work.” She pointed
down the street.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Barb.”
    “I’m Ken.”
    “Barbie and Ken.” She smiled. “My friends
are going to rip me a new one over that.”
    It took him a few moments before he got it.
Was she making fun of him? He looked at her, still standing there,
smiling with teeth from a dental ad, waiting for him to say
something clever...
    “What time do you get off work?”
    “Six.”
    “Would you like to go to dinner with
me?”
    “Only if you’ve got a lot of money, because
I am really hungry. Not to mention, thirsty.”
    “I have money.” It had been a good month.
He’d killed two guys and he had another one to do this afternoon,
although he wouldn’t get paid until tomorrow.
    “If you’ve got the money, honey, I got the
time.”
    Ken had to control himself from having a
nostalgic meltdown right then and there. His mother used to sing
that song when he was a kid, and waltz him off his feet around the
kitchen in their shitty little two-bedroom apartment, until he got
too big for her and she got too drunk to dance.
    Ken looked at his watch. “How about if I
meet you right back here when you get off work?”
    “Deal.” She offered her hand.
    Reluctantly, he shook hands with her,
feeling her little palm swallowed up inside his big paw. Her hand
was very warm and slightly moist, like a burrito that had just come
out of the microwave.
    “Okay, I’ll see you later.”
    “You know, maybe I shouldn’t say this,” she
said, “but you have awesome hands. They give me the shivers, you
know, in a nice way.”
    “I get that a lot,” he lied, and he knew by
the way she laughed that she knew he was full of it and she didn’t
care. She waved bye and headed off toward the Gap.
    He turned and walked away. He gritted his
teeth, telling himself not to get all mushy and look back at her.
He started to hum a tune to himself, observing the debate going on
between his ears. There was the old Ken who insisted she’d stand
him up and he’d never see her again, and there was the new Ken who
believed he’d see her for dinner tonight, and then who knows what
could happen...
    He walked back to his car, a 14-year-old
white Volvo – solid, dependable and unremarkable, very much like
himself. He got inside and drove across town to Danforth Avenue
where he parked on Logan in the heart of Greektown. It was
wall-to-wall restaurants and bars and cafés for half a dozen blocks
along this stretch. It was a warm and sunny September afternoon and
there were lots of people on the terraces. He found the restaurant
he wanted and went inside and saw the guy sitting there with a
couple of friends. He was wearing a yellow shirt that stuck out
like a banana in a cornfield. Perfect.
    Ken checked his watch and walked back to his
car. He knew the guy had to be somewhere else at five o’clock, and
he’d have to leave soon. But if Ken had his way, he wouldn’t get
far.
    He got back inside his Volvo and opened the
glove compartment to take out a pair of see-through latex gloves.
He pulled them on and then reached under his seat to take out the
gun. It was a .22-caliber Comanche revolver with a 9-shot magazine.
They were pretty cheap and he bought them by the six-pack for a
discount. The originals had 6-inch barrels but he’d taken a hacksaw
to all of them and cut an inch and half off the muzzles. All the
work he did was close up and personal, and he didn’t need a gun
sight to hit a frontal lobe.
    He got out of the car and slipped on the
double-breasted blue blazer with the gold buttons that he kept in
the car for his work. He looked around to make sure no one