The Art of Disposal Read Online Free PDF Page B

got it.”
    He must have raided someone's locker, because we could hear a lot of metal doors banging around. I heard the thump-da-thump of one of those industrial paper-towel dispensers. Then he limped back with a light blue polo shirt and handed it off to me, never once looking into my eyes. He'd used a huge sheet of clean brown paper towel to carry the shirt, just to make sure that no blood got on it. That was mighty nice of him.
    I slipped it over my head. It was a little tight, but it was clean.
    “All right Baby Blue, let's roll,” Dan the Man said.
    I felt antsy the whole drive back into town. Dan the Man told me to quit checking my watch. “She'll wait. What else is she gonna do?” he said.
    Back in the office parking lot, I hopped out of Dan's Toyota Camry and jogged over to my car. I drive a black Honda Accord. Nice, but not too flashy. Dan the Man swayed me into buying a car that doesn't stand out too much. Something practical.
    “Ricky's Park Avenue looks like a car that a thug would drive. My car looks like something a high school teacher would drive to a picnic. You tell me who's smarter,” he said, back when I was flipping through the pages of an Auto-Trader Weekly.
    I didn't have time to go home and take a shower, and that put me in a sour mood. I like a hot shower. Sometimes I take three a day.
    I bee-lined it straight over to the look-out point where Marcia meets up with me. We can't be seen together: she's happily married with two kids. She was there all right, hands in her pockets and tapping her foot, as I turned into the mostly vacant lot. She was wearing a long coat and sunglasses.
    “Where have you been?” she said, as she crawled into the passenger seat.
    “I could go on and on.”
    “You always have a story.” She was trying to be mad about it, but she couldn't keep it up. I moved closer to her and squeezed her thigh.
    “You and me make the best story,” I said, not meaning a word of it.
    She shook her head, but she was cracking one hell of a smile that she couldn't stop from taking over her face. She looked damn good like that. Sweet and sly and just a little bit evil. I wondered if her husband had any idea about us. All I knew about him was that his name was Kevin, and he sold home and life insurance.
    I kind of hoped that he was worthless. But Marcia never had a bad word to say about him. In fact it was the opposite. Kevin was Mister Wonderful, a good provider who loved and cherished his children. So why did she sleep with a guy like me? I'll tell you why. Boredom. The Kevins of this world have a lot going for them, but they're lacking in one department. Excitement. And a girl like Marcia has a real dirty side, an itch that a guy like Kevin just can't scratch. I'm not saying it's right, but it's just the way it is.
    “He'll be expecting me home soon.”
    “Okay,” I said. “Same time next week? I won't be late.”
    She gave me a kiss and hopped out of the car. “You don't have another girl, do you?” she said with the door half open, pulling her purse off the seat.
    “Are you kidding me? I can hardly manage you,” I said.
    There's some bright, shiny hypocrisy for you—a broad, cheating on her husband, thinking that she should be the only woman in your life.
    I watched her walk across the parking lot. She had a great can that shifted up and down just right, and the way her legs crissed and crossed in front of one another would have the Dalai Lama thinking unholy thoughts. She reached her beat-up Honda Civic and drove off, back to her other life somewhere, where some insurance salesman named Kevin would probably kiss and squeeze her and think that he was some lucky guy.
    I wondered what Gideon Cash was doing. Probably at the hospital. How would he explain his missing toe? Would he make up some story for his wife and kids… a gardening accident? A car part that fell on his foot in the shop? He sure as hell wouldn't tell them the truth. Sometimes the truth is so ugly it's better