Hair Trigger 2.0 Issue One

were equally serious on the subject of my future. Mr. Davis was so much an extension of my
parents that I never questioned that he had anything but my glorious future in his vision.
Look, it's no surprise to you at this point that Jim Davis was wicked, and that my resolve to
slay the sixty-five year old—collector of social security and receiver of senior discounts, wearer of
side-shield sunglasses and abstainer from popcorn and caramels and anything to threaten the
brittle teeth from his Missouri boyhood—was plain justice. I will spare you the details; it is
enough to say that Mr. Davis compounded perversion upon perversion by narrating his deeds. All
these years later, it is the memory of his voice that animates my—hatred is the wrong word, for it
is nothing so alive and caring as hatred.
And it's true, the longer Jim Davis lay in the ground, the more my store would grow and
thrive. Once the townsfolk got over tradition and habit—the faint obligation to local business that
only flourished in towns like this—they'd come pouring in like mud in a pit during a rainstorm.
We were more equipped to deal with the new era than he—where pianos were volume adjustable
and drum kits were electronic, and the instruments practically played themselves—and savvy
counted as much as mastery, and the kids in town would figure that out as soon as they stepped in
the fucking door. But this old man was still alive. And until I did something about it, the whole
town would suffer.
I couldn't share my plan with Coraly. Harboring a dark secret was no joy. I did not fantasize
about wrapping my hands around Jim's neck. There was no glamor in the killing of him, only
cold necessity.
I had arranged a meeting with Guy—not his real name, it's safe to assume—for Sunday
breakfast at the cafe, so all weekend I had to reckon with the irony of the lie that I would be
returning to church. But that morning before I left the house Coraly saw me mugging in front of
the mirror trying to look tough in case Guy turned out to be some kind of shake-down artist
trying to get the better of me, and she said "who are you making yourself pretty for?"
Coraly and I had only been married two years, so that we still wore our jealousies on our
faces, and I could never have evaded her question, or glided past it. I tried to wear a confused
mask. But like a dog guarding his own mess, I never counted on the fact that she could smell what
I'd done. So, though I am less of a man for it, I fell into her arms, and I wept and blubbered until
she soothed me like a mother, and I was cured for the moment of the demons that Jim Davis had
once put upon me. And in that restful calm she asked me why I never told her before about the
" 24 | Hair Trigger 2.0