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He stood in the doorway, looking at Deenie and her bruised boy. The kid had gone back to sleep,
and in the morning sun, the two of them looked almost angelic.
She’s no angel. Maybe she didn’t leave the bruises, but she went out partying and left him alone. If you
hadn’t been there when he woke up and walked into the living room . . .
Canny, the kid had said, reaching for the blow. Not good. Something needed to be done.
Maybe, but not by me. I’d look good showing up at DHS to complain about child neglect with this face,
wouldn’t I? Reeking of booze and puke. Just an upstanding citizen doing his civic duty.
You can put her money back, Wendy said. You can do that much.
He almost did. Really. He took it out of his pocket and had it right there in his hand. He even
strolled it over to her purse, and the walk must have done him good, because he had an idea.
Take the coke, if you’ve got to take something. You can sell what’s left for a hundred bucks. Maybe even two
hundred, if it hasn’t been stomped on too much.
Only, if his potential buyer turned out to be a narc—it would be just his luck—he’d wind up in
jail. Where he might also find himself nailed for whatever stupid shit had gone down in the Milky
Way. The cash was way safer. Seventy bucks in all.
I’ll split it, he decided. Forty for her and thirty for me.
Only, thirty wouldn’t do him much good. And there were the food stamps—a wad big enough to
choke a horse. She could feed the kid with those.
He picked up the coke and the dusty People magazine and put them on the kitchenette counter,
safely out of the kid’s reach. There was a scrubbie in the sink, and he used it on the coffee table,
cleaning up the leftover shake. Telling himself that if she came stumbling out while he was doing it,
he would give her back her goddam money. Telling himself that if she went on snoozing, she deserved
whatever she got.
Deenie didn’t come out. She went on snoozing.
Dan finished cleaning up, tossed the scrubbie back in the sink, and thought briefly about leaving a
note. But what would it say? Take better care of your kid, and by the way, I took your cash?
Okay, no note.
He left with the money in his left front pocket, being careful not to slam the door on his way out.
He told himself he was being considerate.
3
Around noon—his hangover headache a thing of the past thanks to Deenie’s Fioricet and a Darvon
chaser—he approached an establishment called Golden’s Discount Liquors & Import Beers. This was
in the old part of town, where the establishments were brick, the sidewalks were largely empty, and
the pawnshops (each displaying an admirable selection of straight razors) were many. His intention
was to buy a very large bottle of very cheap whiskey, but what he saw out front changed his mind. It
was a shopping cart loaded with a bum’s crazy assortment of possessions. The bum in question was
inside, haranguing the clerk. There was a blanket, rolled up and tied with twine, on top of the cart.
Dan could see a couple of stains, but on the whole it didn’t look bad. He took it and walked briskly
away with it under his arm. After stealing seventy dollars from a single mother with a substance abuse
problem, taking a bum’s magic carpet seemed like small shit indeed. Which might have been why he
felt smaller than ever.
I am the Incredible Shrinking Man, he thought, hurrying around the corner with his new prize. Steal a
few more things and I will vanish entirely from sight.