Hair Trigger

Nate’s accountant convinced him to declare bankruptcy on The Gallery and sell the inventory. A lovely Indian girl just out of college made the telephone calls. Luckily, feeling as bright and intuitive as Nate usually did during the day-time, he remembered that he should retrieve Alison’s drawing cabinet. The Gallery’s demise would leave Alison more adrift than ever.

After the accountant he rode in a hired car for an appointment with his source. He had just read about a popular sleeping pill that occasionally compelled people to eat in their sleep. Like sleep walking, except it was sleep eating. It sounded like the answer for Alison. She needed more sleep and healthy food.

His cocaine connection lived in the suburbs along Lake Michigan’s north shore. The security system fed directly into the local police station; that’s how confident the man was, rich beyond suspicion. Cocaine dealer or not, nothing rattled the man. Handsome and urbane in soft, understated casual clothes, he impressed Nate as the most comfortable, efficient person on earth. Nate hated to ask him for sleeping pills, but no one else would meet the request so graciously. And over the years Nate had proved a consistent, tactful, and ever more successful dealer.

Afterwards, the driver, whom Nate paid in cash and tipped with a vial, dropped him off in front of The Gallery. When he told Alison the store was bankrupt, her eyes brimmed.

“It’s for the better, honey, you’ll see. This weekend we can take a vacation.”

Her eyes grew round. “A vacation!”

“I mean, at home, just you and me. But I promise, next month, I’ll arrange things so we can go away for a week.”

He had already stopped at the apartment, arranged his supplies, and locked up. He had parked his truck in front of The Gallery, by a fire hydrant but so what. He hauled the drawing cabinet into the back. Alison remembered James’ guitar; the rest was for the bank.

At home, Nate thought that since Alison was chronically sleep-deprived, she might want to try a sleeping pill. But she jumped up and wrapped her legs around him to kiss him. She said that as long as she slept at night, she wanted to play all day. Then she dressed in a pale T-shirt dress, with ruching along the hips that added to her shape, and matched him line for line. Nate removed his pants and socks but left on his boxers and shirt.

They romped around the place, snorting up too many lines to count, clutching at each other and laughing. Nate said, “Wait a minute. Let’s up the ante,” and he retrieved his gun from the drawer in the dining room.

“Put that down. Only guys think guns are sexy. You want danger, lie down here.” Alison jumped on top of his swollen body and tried to wrap her hands around his neck. He tore her hands loose and bent the fingers back. He slapped her face until tears formed at the corner of her eyes.

*

At Trevor’s Cycles, James was asking Wardell what he should do next.

“We’re looking good. Go home.”

Wardell would say, “Looking good,” no matter what he was looking at. But the store was looking great and after tomorrow it would look better than it ever had.

Turning right on to Halsted and racing several blocks, James stopped short. The Gallery was dark. Rolling his cycle up to the front window, he peered inside. From the nearby streetlamps, he could tell the store was empty.

Before he stepped inside the kitchen he called, “Hello! Nate, Alison! It’s James!” He called as loudly as he could, but to compensate for his speech problems, his shout was kind of soft. He wheeled his bicycle into his room and could hear Alison crying. She was saying, “Don’t, you bastard. Stop! You’re hurting me.”

He heard Nate say, “You love it, bitch. You love it and I’m not letting go until you admit it.”

James sidled into the dining room quietly. Nate was pulling Alison’s long hair from the nape of her neck so hard she was bending backwards. She fell and he hauled her up. After pressing her into a corner, he slapped her. First her face, one side and the other, then her body. When he grabbed her neck in one hand and she gasped, pounding his chest, so that he bellowed even as he was smacking her, James noticed the Glock on the dresser. The safety mechanism was not where he could find it. The gun was nothing like Wardell’s forty-five.

Still, Nate was butting his head into Alison’s thin body and she was screaming. James pointed the gun low, at Nate’s feet, and pulled the trigger. He stumbled on the carpet, which was askew and uneven. A fold he didn’t expect caught his toes, throwing him off balance so that he pulled the trigger again.

Simultaneously with the explosion, blood blossomed from Nate’s lower backside. Alison shifted to the side, screaming at James. “Don’t you know anything?” She swore and wept and shrieked. James glanced back as he hurried away, seeing blood pooling as Nate’s  hand slid down the wall. Halfway out, hopping on his cycle, he could still hear Alison screaming, “Murder! James, you murdered him!”

Tears blinding him, he raced back to the cycle shop. Wardell was working at the computer still, utility lamps burning.

Before James reached the door, Wardell had already hurried outside, taking the boy by the shoulders as he extricated himself from the bicycle. What is it? What’s happened?”

Whatever it was, Wardell could not understand a word Jim said. He flew apart, scattering like a tray of beads on cement. “Deep breaths, now. Take deep breaths.”

Before long James managed to explain what he’d done. “Chances are, Jim, you did not kill him. And if you did, there are different ways to consider it. My own bias is that you did a favor to humanity. Objectively, there’s self-defense, Alison-defense, one man’s life or two others…You know what? Call your father. Get yourself under control and call him up.”

James splashed cold water on his face. He felt surreal, as if he had left his body and was floating around, free of the world. But he did what Wardell said.

He called his father. “Hello. This is James.”

“Hello James.”

“I’m in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“I might have killed someone.”

“So you need a lawyer.”   

(To be continued)