Trust Read Free Page B

can’t take this, for your stuff. You got something smaller, that’s fine. Or something bigger, a hundred—also fine. But no fifties no way now, in Chuckie’s—we eighty-sixed them ’fore Memorial Day. Hell, we didn’t even take twennies, till almost the Fourth of July. Counterfeit, you know? Like ‘No good’? Like ‘Dunno where you got this, ma’am’—you take it to the bank—‘but the Treasury didn’t print it and we sure don’t want it here.’ And you say: ‘Do I do?’ And they look at you, and they just sort of shrug, and they tellyou that that’s your decision. Paper your spare room, if you got enough, or use them for toilet paper.”
    “Well, now it’s fifties they’re passing,” she said. “So it’s fifties now, we’re not taking. And bad’s I got burned, the first part of May, at least I’m glad it was twennies. Cost me, I hadda give Chuckie a hundred and eighty, taken right out of my pay. And Al and Lucy, and Chuckie himself, they all got nailed pretty bad too. Those bastards got into us a good thousand bucks, before the bank tipped us off. So, you got something smaller, if you wanna buy this stuff?”
    “Oh,” he said, fumbling for his wallet again. “I didn’t know. Lemme see here. My boss always pays me, he pays me in cash. He just paid me that one last night. But maybe I got here …” He pulled out a number of one-dollar bills that had been wadded up and then smoothed out. He began to count them out. “Nine,” he finished. He pushed them toward her. “That oughta do it,” he said.
    She picked up the soiled bills and raised her eyebrows. “How long you had these items?” she said. “Your mother at your confirmation?”
    He grinned and tried to look sheepish. “I’m not very good about money,” he said. “I buy something, I always use the biggest bill I got, ’cause it’s easier’n counting out singles. Then I get the change, and I stick it in my pocket till I get home and change my pants and I just put it in my wallet.”
    She rang the drawer open and gave him his change. “You, ah,” he said. “I’m looking, the Beachmont Motel?”
    “It’s downah road,” she said, jerking her head to indicate the direction. “You should’ve followed thosethree lugs with the beer—that’s where they were going. Goddamned kids. Hiding out in college so they maybe miss the draft. Which they seem to think gives them the right, just roll right over everybody. Call a cop on those kids, they start whining right away: ‘I’m gonna be in ’Nam next year.’ Bull
shit
is what I say. They’ll figure out another wrinkle. Wish my kid was like that.” She paused. “Or,” she said, “four-five years ago, you could’ve followed your showgirl. She used to spend
lots
of time there. Most of it on her back. But now that she’s married, the owner, lady of leisure and all, she never goes near the damned place.”
    “That guy with her, he’s the owner?” Earl said.
    “Yup,” the cashier said, extending her left hand to receive the purchases of one of the middle-aged men who had finished his deliberations. “Good old Jimmy Battles. Looks as soft as a bowl fulla custard, but meaner’n snakes when he’s pissed. And the closest thing to a jackhammer I ever saw in bed.” She glanced back at Earl. “You’re thinking of staying, staying at Jimmy’s, I’d change my mind, I was you. I know that joint on the inside and out. There’s not a bed in it, ’ll fit you.” She snickered. “ ’Less he cuts you down to size, like he does everybody else. Or has his beefboys do it.”
    “I can take care of myself all right,” Earl said, picking up his goods.
    “
Oh
,” she said. “Well, that’s too bad. Jimmy don’t like guys like you. Takes care of them himself.”

3
    The Beachmont Motel was a two-story cinder-block building shaped like a splayed V and set on a narrow, paved lot carved out of a small hillside (it was destroyed by fire two weeks after Labor Day in 1986; the