14

Jack didn’t feel like walking back across town, so he took a cab. The driver made a couple of tries at small talk about the Mets but the terse, grunted replies from the back seat soon shut him up. Jack could not remember another time in his life when he had felt so low—not even after his mother’s death. He needed to talk to someone, and it wasn’t a cabbie.

He had the hack drop him off at a little Mom-and-Pop on the corner west of his apartment: Nick’s Nook. An unappetizing place with New York City grime permanently imbedded in the plate glass windows. Some of that grime seemed to have filtered through the glass and onto the grocery display items behind it. Faded dummy boxes of Tide, Cheerios, Gainsburgers, and such had been there for years and would probably remain there for many more. Both Nick and his store needed a good scrubbing. His prices would shame an Exxon executive, but the Nook was handy, and baked goods were delivered fresh daily—at least he said they were.

Jack picked up an Entenmann’s crumb cake that didn’t look too dusty, checked the fresh date on the side and found it was good till next week.

“Going over to Abe’s, eh?” Nick said. He had three chins, one little one supported by two big ones, all in need of a shave.

“Yeah. Thought I’d bring the junky his fix.”

“Tell him I said ’lo.”

“Right.”

He walked over to Amsterdam Avenue and then down to the Isher Sports Shop. Here he knew he’d find Abe Grossman, friend and confidant for almost as long as he had been Repairman Jack. In fact, Abe was one of the reasons Jack had moved into this neighborhood. Abe was the ultimate pessimist. No matter how dark things looked, Abe’s outlook was darker. He could make a drowning man feel lucky.

Jack glanced through the window. A fiftyish man was alone inside, sitting on a stool behind the cash register, reading a paperback.

The store was too small for its stock. Bicycles hung from the ceiling; fishing rods, tennis racquets, and basketball hoops littered the walls while narrow aisles wound between pressing benches, hockey nets, scuba masks, soccer balls, and countless other weekend-making items hidden under or behind each other. Inventory was an annual nightmare.

“No customers?” Jack asked to the accompaniment of the bell that chimed when the door opened.

Abe peered over the halfmoons of his reading glasses. “None. And the census won’t be changed by your arrival, I’m sure.”

“Au contraire. I come with goodies in hand, and money in pocket.”

“Did you—?” Abe peered over the counter at the white box with the blue lettering. “You did! Crumb? Bring it over here.”

Just then a big burly fellow in a dirty sleeveless undershirt stuck his head in the door. “I need a box of twelve gauge double-O. Y’got any?”

Abe removed his glasses and gave the man a withering stare.

“You will note, sir, that the sign outside says ’Sporting Goods.’ Killing is not a sport!”

The man looked at Abe as if he had just turned green, and went away.

For a big man, Abe Grossman showed he could move quickly when he wanted to. He carried an easy two hundred pounds packed into a five-eight frame. His graying hair had receded back to the top of his head. His clothes never varied: black pants, short-sleeved white shirt, shiny black tie. The tie and shirt were a sort of scratch-and-sniff catalog of the food he had eaten that day. As Abe rounded the end of the counter, Jack spotted scrambled egg, mustard, and what could be either catsup or spaghetti sauce.

“You really know how to hurt a guy,” he said, breaking off a piece of cake and biting heartily. “You know I’m on a diet.” Powdered sugar speckled his tie as he spoke.

“Yeah. I noticed.”

“S’true. It’s my own special diet. Absolutely no carbohydrates—except for Entenmann’s cake. That’s a free food. All other portions have to be measured, but Entenmann’s is ad lib.” He took another big bite and spoke around it. Crumb cake always made him manic. “Did I tell you I added a codicil to my will? I’ve decided that after I’m cremated I want my ashes buried in an Entenmann’s box. Or if I’m not cremated, it should be a white, glass-topped coffin with blue lettering on the side.” He held up the cake box. “Just like this. Either way, I want to be interred on a grassy slope overlooking the Entenmann’s plant in Bay Shore.”

Jack tried to smile but it must have been a poor attempt. Abe stopped in mid-chew.

“What’s eating up your quderim?”

“Saw Gia today.”

“It’s over. Really over.”

“You didn’t know that?”

“I knew it but I didn’t believe it.” Jack forced himself to ask a question he wasn’t sure he wanted answered. “Am I crazy, Abe? Is there something wrong in my head for wanting to live this way? Is my pilot light flickering and I don’t know it?”

Without taking his eyes from Jack’s face, Abe put down his piece of cake and made a half-hearted attempt to brush off his front. He succeeded only in smearing the sugar specks on his tie into large white blotches.

“What did she do to you?”

“Opened my eyes, maybe. Sometimes it takes an outsider to make you see yourself as you really are.”

“And you see what?”

Jack took a deep breath. “A crazy man. A violent crazy man.”

“That’s what her eyes see. But what does she know? Does she know about Mr. Canelli? Does she know about your mother? Does she know how you got to be Repairman Jack?”

“Nope. Didn’t wait to hear.”

“There! You see? She knows nothing! She understands nothing! And she’s closed her mind to you, so who wants someone like that?”

“Me!”

“Well,” Abe said, rubbing a hand across his forehead and leaving a white smear, “that I can’t argue with.” He glared at Jack. “How old are you?”

Jack had to think a second. He always felt stupid when he had to remember his age.

“Uhh… thirty-four.”

“Thirty-four. Surely you’ve been ditched before?”

“Abe… I can’t remember ever feeling about anyone the way I feel about Gia. And she’s afraid of me!”

“Fear of the unknown. She doesn’t know you, so she’s afraid of you. I know all about you. Am I afraid?”

“Aren’t you? Ever?”

“Never!” He trotted back behind the counter and picked up a copy of the New York Post. Rifling through the pages, he said, “Look—a five-year-old beaten to death by his mother’s boyfriend! A guy with a straight razor slashes eight people in Times Square last night and then disappears into a subway! A headless, handless torso is found in a West Side hotel room! As a hit-and-run victim lays bleeding in the street, people run up to him, rob him, and then leave him there. I should be afraid of you?”

Jack shrugged, unconvinced. None of this would bring Gia back; it was what he was that had driven her away. He decided he wanted to do his business here and go home.

“I need something.”

“What?”

“A slapper. Lead and leather.”

Abe nodded. “Ten ounces do?”

“Sure.”

Abe locked the front door and hung the “Back In A Few Minutes” sign facing out through the glass. He passed Jack and led him toward the back, where they stepped into a closet and closed the door after them. A push swung the rear wall of the closet away from them. Abe hit a light switch and they started down a worn stone stairway. As they moved, a neon sign flickered to life:

FINE WEAPONS

THE RIGHT TO BUY WEAPONS IS THE

RIGHT TO BE FREE

Jack had often asked Abe why he had placed a neon sign where advertising would do no good; Abe unfailingly replied that every good weapons shop should have such a sign.

“When you get right down to it, Jack,” Abe was saying, “what I think of you or what Gia thinks of you isn’t going to matter much in the long run. Because there isn’t going to be a long run. Everything’s falling apart. You know that. There’s not much time left before civilization collapses completely. It’s going to start soon. The banks’ll start to go any day now. These people who think their savings are insured by the FDIC? Have they got a rude awakening coming! Just wait till the first couple of banks go under and they find out the FDIC only has enough to cover a pupik’s worth of the deposits it’s supposed to be insuring. Then you’ll see panic, my boy. That’s when the government will crank up the printing presses to full speed to cover those deposits and we’ll have runaway inflation on our hands. I tell you…”

Jack cut him off. He knew the routine by heart.

“You’ve been telling me for ten years, Abe! Economic ruin has been around the corner for a decade now. Where is it?”

“Coming, Jack. Coming. I’m glad my daughter’s fully grown and disinclined toward marriage and a family. I shudder at the thought of a child or a grandchild growing up in the coming time.”

Jack thought of Vicky. “Full of good cheer as usual, aren’t you? You’re the only man I know who lights up a room when he leaves.”

“Very funny. I’m only trying to open your eyes so you can take steps to protect yourself.”

“And what about you? You’ve got a bomb shelter somewhere in the sticks full of freeze-dried food?”

Abe shook his head. “Nah. I’ll take my chances here. I’m not built for a post-holocaust lifestyle. And I’m too old to learn.”

He flipped another wall switch at the bottom of the steps, bringing the ceiling lights to life.

The basement was as crowded as the upstairs, only there was no sporting equipment down here. The walls and floors were covered with every one-man weapon imaginable. There were switchblades, clubs, swords, brass knuckles, and a full array of firearms from derringers to bazookas.

Abe went over to a cardboard box and rummaged through it.

“You want a slapper or the braided kind.”

“Braided.”

Abe tossed him something in a Zip-lok bag. Jack removed it and hefted it in his hand. The sap, sometimes called a blackjack, was made of thin strips of leather woven around a lead weight; the weave tightened and tapered down to a firm handle that ended in a looped thong for the wrist. Jack fitted it on and tried a few short swings. The flexibility allowed him to get his wrist into the motion, a feature that might come in handy at close quarters.

He stood looking at the sap.

This was the sort of thing that had frightened Gia off. He swung it once more, harder, striking the edge of a wooden shipping crate. There was a loud crack; splinters flew.

“This’ll do fine. How much?”

“Ten.”

Jack reached into his pocket. “Used to be eight.”

“That was years ago. One of these should last you a lifetime.”

“I lose things.” He handed over a ten-dollar bill and put the sap into his pocket.

“Need anything else while we’re down here?”

Jack ran a mental inventory of his weapons and ammunition. “No. I’m pretty well set.”

“Good. Then let’s go upstairs and we’ll have some cake and talk. You look like you need some talk.”

“Thanks, Abe,” Jack said, leading the way upstairs, “but I’ve got some errands to run before dark, so I’ll take a rain-check.”

“You hold things in too much. I’ve told you that before. We’re supposed to be friends. So talk it out. You don’t trust me anymore?”

“I trust you like crazy. It’s just…”

“What?”

“I’ll see you, Abe.”