The Ruby Slippers (12 page)

A movement at the shop front brings Harrison bolt upright and excited: Yeah, here he is, Shop Boy, right now, staggering under the cartons round to the side, and Grocer Man, not lifting a finger, deserving everything coming to him. When he sees Mrs Grocer take off her coat, all bang on plan, he knows it’s a half-hour to action stations. It gives him all the more satisfaction to see the light come on up above as she tramps upstairs, and he starts to feel he is part of an unstoppable process gliding smoothly to its glorious end. He lights up a cigarette, cool as you like. So what if he is seen, don’t he and the guys just hang out here all the time?

And now he allows his mind to wander – along carefully controlled lines, of course. Stealing the slippers is one thing, but turning them into greenbacks is another. Weird stuff like these shoes, it’s gonna have to go through the hands of people who know other people, and a cut will come off each time. That’s the way it is. Even so, a cut of a million is big bucks. Harrison moves on to the misty contemplation of what he would do with a quarter of a million dollars. In this he is not quite so realistic. In no time, he has conjured a big, swanky house with a pool and an annexe for Great Aunt Crystal. In the twinkle of an eye, he is travelling down to Coney with the guys in the next most desirable object of his fantasy, a big shiny Hummer. The imagination is a peculiar thing, and Harrison sees himself at one and the same time driving the wicked machine and getting high in the back of it, having fun with sexy women who simply cannot resist a cool black dude with dollars hanging out of his pockets.

It takes something out of the ordinary to shake Harrison from his daydream: an old yellow cab pulls up directly outside the deli and sits there with the engine running. For five grinding minutes he is left fretting and wondering if this is the thing that will throw his awesome plan. But then Grocer Man comes out of the door carrying a big old bag, which has appeared from nowhere. Then she comes out, and Harrison notices that she is wearing old-woman’s Sunday best under a smart blue coat, with a brooch over her heart, her hair pumped-up and her lips all red. Then into the cab she gets and away it goes, with the grocer standing waving at the door. OK, so she’s off on a night out, maybe to see that skinny mean-faced bitch of a daughter who sometimes comes round the place. Either way, all to the good: one less person to get in the way of things. This thing is going to happen; he has made it so.

He throws down his cigarette butt, takes out gloves and eases them on. He’s pretty sure they would never go to the cops, but best take care. He pulls the beanie down under his hood, runs his hand along the bladed side pocket, feels the flashlight heavy in the other. From far-off St Dom’s comes the striking of the hour. Can this be the moment? Seconds later, Shop Boy comes out, zipping his top, wiping snot on his sleeve, hits the sidewalk, picks up his heels. Shit, he’s getting away! But just as he is about to disappear in the dark, here comes Grocer Man, sticking his old turkey head round the door, bang in the nick of time: ‘Wait a minute, young man!’ Shop Boy stops in his tracks and turns round, slow and heavy, cheated of his liberty. ‘Hmm, are we not forgetting something this fine evening?’ Harrison watches hungrily as, stiff and controlling, the grocer man reels the boy back in, beckoning with a crooked finger, like some cheesy old storybook character. Puppet and master, boy and man, line up and turn together for the alleyway.

Now, the moment is now! Breath-catching, heart-pounding, Harrison does it – runs like hell, runs like fury, across the road, into the doorway. He flies the threshold, trips and stumbles. Along the counter he goes, between the racks, between the cases, seconds ticking. The smell of bleach, cheese, bananas. Things flash by him; things in rows, things in colours. Easy, steady, take it slower. He comes to the cold store, frantic to remember: where’s the door? There’s the door – get it open! He grabs the handle, turns it, fumbling. He sneaks the door open, slips inside and gently shuts it. All falls quiet, cool and quiet – just the sound of his own breathing. All is stillness – dark and stillness, dark and nothing.

So they’re his now.

■ ♦ ■

Harrison smiles softly in the darkness. Everything going just beautiful. Listen: there goes the shop door, the grocer wiping his feet on the mat – the damn mat that nearly had him over! Then footsteps, clattering across the floor like a train, followed by the sharp clack of the counter-flap. The grocer man back where he belongs. And now he can just make out the sound of the TV,
The Daily Show
and all the laughing. He slips the flashlight from his pocket, shining it away from the door, the beam bringing up the void. He sees he is on a narrow landing – a heavy stairway dropping straight down from it, with only a rope for a rail. It didn’t used to be like this; the old stair must have rotted away. He counts the steps – twelve – and picks out the shelves spread below on the hard stone floor. Jesus, if he had run any further he would have gone right over. He angles the torch down onto gloomy rows of high shelves grey with boxes and trailing away in the dark. It reminds him, as it always used to, of those spooky underground tombs in horror movies. He turns in, gripping the rope to descend – not a clunk, not a creak – counting the steps until he feels cold stone beneath him. Down the gap he inches, pigeon-toed so as not to brush against anything. He arrives below the shelf, on top of which sits a million dollars in a golden box. Now to find the stepladder. He points the flashlight back at the stairs, then one by one down the rows. Where the hell is it? He tiptoes back to the shelf, takes hold of an upright, feeling its strength. Could it hold him, could the boards take his weight without giving way? He peers at his watch: twenty-two minutes to go. Easy now, settle down and wait. Gently, he pulls out a large carton – boxes of washing powder, the smell of it friendly somehow – and makes a seat of it. From this low position, though, the shelves loom all the more, like tombs. He shivers, craving the familiar and the ordinary, tunes his ears to the far-off TV, straining to hear it. Who they got this time on
The Daily Show
? Some crazy senator going on about guns, or some big wheel got caught with his pants down? Harrison relaxes, comforted by the pleasant fuzz of voices.

With a deathly judder, he wakes. Jesus, he has slept! He jumps up, tries to read his watch, but the dial is lightless in the dead black. Then a sound: a roll of steps above. Is that the grocer going out, or coming in? Then comes a weighty rumble, a jarring of wheels. He is bringing in the stands, thank God. Hurry, hurry, on with the torch and hurry! Sweat breaks on his brow; something crumples in his guts, the torch nowhere, not in hand or pocket; it must have dropped from his hand when he slept. Harrison pushes out his feet, scrabbling blindly in the dark, crabs right, crabs left, an age blind scrabbling. Then his foot rolls over something and he squats down, takes it and switches on the light, his hand tight-fastened. Hurry! The old man must not close the shop and lock the shutters! Harrison flies down the row, takes hold of the post – to hell with caution! Up he swings, up he clambers, feels the woodwork twisting and straining but holding. He reaches for the top, finds its dusty coldness, hoists up his face to see above the rim, both hands clinging. And there it is! Hanging on, one-handed, he stretches out his free arm, shuddering with the strain, until at last he has it. So, down he clatters, the frame creaking but holding, and jumps the last foot to the floor. And then it’s to the stair and slowly up in silence. He reasons that the old man must be in the cold store, unless the door is already locked! He shunts open the door a crack, peering down to the counter and beyond. Nothing, but at least the shutter is not drawn. And there he sees it, the cold-store door half-open. So he is in there. Clutching the precious box, Harrison tiptoes quick, like a cartoon cat, comes to the door, ears straining. For sure, the grocer man is in there; he can hear him coughing. So now to dash across the doorway, run and risk it . . .

A funny thing happens: just as Harrison sprints for the gap, the door flies open and smacks him square on the forehead. Staggering back and looking faintly surprised, he drops the box, and then out comes the grocer, looking equally surprised, a big butcher’s knife in his hand. Harrison puts his hand to his searing head, pushing back his hat and exposing his face to the old man, who asks, amazed, as anyone in the same situation might: ‘What you doing?!’ Again, despite the fact that here in front of him is the dangerous boy, all hooded and the hatbox lying on the floor in front him, he demands again to know, ‘What you doing?!’ And he raises up the knife, an exclamation mark.

Somewhat dazed, Harrison sees only the knife, a blade to slice flesh from bone. His eyes narrow: he hates this knife, he cannot take it, he will not, the old man raising it to him like this. ‘Put down the knife!’ he says, and takes a step. ‘Don’t raise no fucking knife at me!’ Michael stiffens, heart pounding, his hand higher yet, but wondering if he could ever really use it. ‘I said, put down the fucking knife!’ Harrison’s hand moves towards the dagger sheathed in his own pocket, but then he glances down and sees the hatbox lying on its side and empty, the lid fallen from it. The shoes have been taken from it! He begins to shake, all the anger that was ever in him rising and seething, every ounce of pain and hatred. The injustice of it – that this disgusting old man should have the slippers still and dare to threaten him with a knife. With a roar, he snatches up the box and, raising it up two-handed, brings it down on the head of the old man, who shields his head and instinctively retreats into the nearest space, which happens to be the cold store. In the panic of the moment, Harrison slams shut the door and throws over the flat heavy bar, forcing it behind its iron hasp. The old man shouts dumb in the glass of the door’s soundless panel, his face written over, first with anger, then with unbelieving. Harrison, meanwhile, stamps the useless box flat, riding out the frenzy of anger that is in him, until at last it is spent and he can collect himself. Close to calm again, he pulls down his beanie, puts up his hood, walks up front, opens the door and turns out the light before letting himself out into the night.

And in the cold-store door, the framed contorted face is yelling all the while, far away yelling . . .

■ ♦ ■

So now the boy is walking, striding oh so fast, expelling from his hurting self every dumb-ass thing he ever did and every thing that ever gave him pain and every hateful person that ever put him down. He never meant nobody harm, but if somebody were to come between him now and what he wants, he would stand and fight and give them back the hurt that has been his. No two ways about it, he could kill if they tried to stop him. The days he spent setting this whole thing up, the time he gave, the watching and the waiting and the time-biding. Fuck them all!

Harrison is a confused young man and knows it, through and through, because everybody has told him so since he was five. And so he lives with it and deals with it in all kinds of complicated ways. The pain is still in him from the deli and he longs to shed it fast. Fool he is, for not realizing that they put the slippers in the safe, and fool to risk his hide over an empty stinking box. So fucking slow of brain and body – how could he be so dumb? Fearful thoughts come to him: will they let it go or will they come after him, the grocer man and his nagging wife? Would they dare to call the cops? He kicks a can, kicks it hard at a car, then kicks again, his foot arriving against the fender, taking empty pleasure in feeling the smooth, shiny metal give. Serve them right for having such a swanky thing when he has none. In all of this, not once does it occur to Harrison that a man is trapped inside a chiller and he’s the only one who knows. His action was one in a whole bad bunch of actions and all those actions are tangled up with other people’s badness. Striding and seething, he lights a cigarette, snorts dragon’s breath. He wants a hit and wants it hard. Arriving at the Avenue, Harrison sees the Park gates shut. He runs over, sets his hands to the rail. He will cut across to his friend Finn, get some rock, and maybe later on he can get round to doing some thinking . . .

■ ♦ ■

‘Come back! Come back! Come back here now, you fucking crazy, crazy, crazy—!’ Michael yells. When all remains still and silent and he realizes the kid is not coming back, his anger turns to disbelief and he calls, pathetically, ‘Stop this, goddam you, you can’t do this!’ And finally, he falls into deep amazement at the sheer cruelty of his fate: ‘Crazy, crazy bastard!’ Then comes a more primitive worry to set the blood pounding in his head and the breaths stabbing in his side – a fear of the deepest darkest kind, as it dawns on Michael that he is inside a locked cold store with the temperature at minus five. But he will not let panic get the better of him: ‘Slow down. Calm down. Don’t give way. Slow the breathing, let it go . . . Now, bring back the brain, make space to think. Just keep it, keep it so . . .’

The controls are outside on the wall, he recalls, and his best shot is to break the glass and reach through. On the floor is the knife, where he dropped it, the one object of any use. He takes it up and slams the hilt against the glass, smashing it clean out. He reaches through, straining for the control unit, but even with the knife in his hand he comes nowhere near. He retracts his arm and scans the space again. What can he use to extend his reach? Just sides of meat and hams hanging on hooks, carcases, dead-cold where he placed them, and wisps of vapour, his own breath held curling in the air, the beginnings of his own ghost. Ugly thoughts take shape: at five under, how long does he have? These sides of meat, four hours it took them to freeze. As he is a living, breathing thing, it should take longer, but maybe less if his brain starts to go. He should breathe slow, keep warm, but he’s in his T-shirt, and he curses loudly to think that he removed his top so as not to get hot shifting stands. Heat goes from the head more than any other part of the body, he has heard. What was it, 30 per cent? Some fearful statistic? Fingers trembling, he removes the apron, rolls it loose, wraps it around his head and ties it under his chin.