Fireworks in the Rain (3 page)

He grinned, and I put my hand in my back pocket and turned on my iPhone. It was soft. So soft, you could hardly hear it: John Denver singing “Rocky Mountain High.” The hardest part of this job is when you have to deal with things like that. But one man’s slap is another man’s switch; what can you do?

“Beer?” he said.

“Love one.”

He opened the cooler and got me out a Coors Light. I popped it, held it up like I was toasting him, and drank. The things I do for the world that the world will never know.

The temperature had crept up a bit, but was still a quite tolerable 90 or so. Meanwhile, the place was filling up, and his friends might be along any minute.

I got out my hip flask and held it out for him. “Like rum?” I said.

“If it’s good,” he said, but accepted it. He tasted, and a delighted grin came over his face. I had some too, to be sociable. I’m not a rum guy, but it was better than the Coors. I handed it back to him, and, while he drank, I put my free hand in my pocket. I squeezed the sponge with the sweet william perfume, and casually wiped my hand on my shirt.

I studied him, gauging where he was. There should be a good quantity of oxytocin running through his system by now, not to mention a bit of alcohol. Enough? Maybe. I turned so we were both facing where the fireworks would be, shoulder to shoulder. I matched the way his shoulders hunched and the way he stood, one leg forward a bit, knees almost locked—not enough for him to think I was mocking him, but enough to tell his subconscious that I was his kind of people.

“Those were some days, weren’t they? You were a helluva runner, man.”

He nodded and smiled.

“Smart, too,” I added. “You knew how to plan a race. There’s more to a footrace than flat-out speed, and I like the way you approached it.”

I hadn’t actually known any of that before grazing for his switches; but he was pleased. “You have to stick around and meet the boys,” he said.

“Maybe,” I told him. “I’ve got a few people showing up.”

He wasn’t married, and he wasn’t happy about that, so I was careful not to make one of my imaginary people an imaginary wife. He nodded and I handed him the flask again. That was enough. Alcohol and oxytocin can complement each other, but the effects can become unpredictable. And those of us who do this don’t like unpredictable.

I said, “Who are the people you’re meeting?”

“Some guys from work.”

“Bankers,” I said. “Exciting crowd, eh?”

He chuckled. “They can be more fun than you’d think.”

“Yeah? What do you do there?”

“Mortgages.”

“Ah. Not a lot of those these days.”

“Well, and foreclosures.”

“Oh! That’d keep you busy.”

It started raining a little. We both ignored it.

“Yeah, it does.”

“What’s it like?” I asked him.

“Hmmm?”

“What’s it like, working on foreclosures?”

“Masses of paperwork. I mean,
masses
of paperwork. I don’t handle it directly, I supervise. But you wouldn’t believe the red tape, the legalities, the forms.”

“Yeah. A guy I went to high school with just had his farm foreclosed on.” Okay, the time for subtly was over; make it or break it right now. “Do you ever think about it?”

“About what?”

I put my left hand into my pants pocket, squeezed the other sponge, put the diluted scent of an old diesel engine onto my hand, and wiped it on my shirt. I brought my right hand up and playfully pushed at his head. It’s a delicate thing, that push. Do it wrong, and all of a sudden your usual heterosexual male starts feeling vaguely threatened, or at least uncomfortable. Do it right, and it’s a sort of friendly teasing gesture that permits you to brush your finger past his temple.

“About throwing people out of their houses.”

He was quiet for a long time after that.

It’s a strange thing. If you’re going to have a job like Pete’s, you must have defenses. Layers of them. First, you concentrate on the tasks, ignoring as much as you can the end result. But more, you have to have built up justifications and arguments enough to keep you going in to work every day—in fact to keep you not bothered by going in to work every day. By any reasonable measure, someone doing that can’t have a conscience about it.

But somewhere, under the walls and layers and defenses, there’s the guy who went to college, who lettered in track, who wanted that girl to notice him. And still further under, there’s the boy who loved fresh corn-on-the-cob, who spent hours watching his grampa work on the tractor, who played with his cousins in spring woods full of sweet william.

He’s in there somewhere. You just have to find him.

The rain came down—light, but steady.

He said, “But what could I do?”

“You could walk the line,” I said. “Between delaying and sabotaging the foreclosures, and going so far you get fired. You’re in a position to do that. And not only that, but you’d enjoy the game.”

He stared at me.

I smiled. I was facing him now, and I reached out and, once more, lightly touched his temple with a finger. “You’ve been thinking about it anyway. You might not have been aware of it, but somewhere inside you’ve been thinking how much fun it would be to gum up the works, just a little.”

Yeah, just a little.

That’s where I left him. He was thinking about it, but I knew it had worked.

Two weeks later, Ren was back.

She was curled up in my arms, her hand on my chest, and I was enjoying her touch and the way the sweat was drying on me. Susi scratched at the door.

“What the other Washington did was big,” I said. “But some people, like me and Peter, are just cut out for little things.”

“Unlike Oskar,” she said.

I nodded, and her head bounced a bit on my chest. “Oskar wants to see the whole banking structure come tumbling down and the wealth divided. But Pete and I don’t work on that scale.”

“I don’t either,” she said.

“I know.”

“There are, like, nine homes on this block about to be foreclosed on. You gave some of them more time, and maybe now they won’t be. I think that’s a win.”

“Yeah.” I pulled her closer. “I’m not saying it’s good. I’m saying it’s better than nothing.”

“It’s better,” she agreed. “What did you do after you left him?”

“About what you’d expect,” I said. “Found myself a decent beer, missed you a lot, and watched the fireworks in the rain.”

Copyright (C) 2013 by Steven Brust

Art copyright (C) 2013 by Wesley Allsbrook