Monsters | Page 2

glares. Imelda Marcos simpered. Henry let a black rain of bad thoughts
drench him. He'd give in and let it loose on the Market Street bus or in
the First Savings where that twisty young teller never looked at him
when she cashed his paycheck. He'd blaze into Rudy's Lunch Bucket
like that guy in Texas and keep slapping magazines into the Beretta
until he had the mass murder record. Only not when Stefan was behind
the counter. Stefan always gave him an extra pickle. Or else he'd just
suck on the gun himself, take a huge bloody gulp of death. He sagged
against Jim Jones, laughing so he wouldn't scream.
"Why me, God?" he said, rubbing the barrel along the stubble on his
chin. "Let me pass on this, okay?" But He wasn't listening. Just because
He could be everywhere, didn't mean He'd want to be. He wouldn't
stoop to this place, not while Henry was celebrating slaughter.
When the music ended, he fit the pistol back into its velvet cradle. He
felt split into two different Henrys, both of them moist and expended.
Part of him suspected this was nothing more than a bughouse riff, like
old Jagger prancing across some stage playing Lucifer. The Beretta
wasn't even loaded; he'd hidden the ammo under the sink behind the
paper towels. But if this were nothing but pretend, why did it give him
more pleasure than a mushroom pizza and a jug of Carlo Rossi Pink
Chablis and a new stroke flick? It may have started as a game, but it
felt real now. Under the influence of the gun, he was solid as a brick.
The rest of his life was smog.
He locked the shrine behind him and went back to the mirror, the only
thing he'd kept when he closed dad's house. The creature leered at him.

He stuck out his thumb and smudged his reflected eye. The hair on the
back of his neck prickled. He thought then he knew what was going to
happen. It wanted to touch someone else and he was going to let it.
The new bus driver was a plush moon-faced woman. She didn't even
bother to look at him as he slid a dollar onto her outstretched hand,
brushing fingertips quickly across the ridges of her skin. He was
nobody to her, another zero. The monster's looping murderous rage was
building like an electric charge as she jabbed at the coin dispenser for
his change. Notice me, pay attention. She dropped the quarter into his
palm and he curled his fingers suddenly, grazing her palm. The unholy
spark of madness crackled between them. She yipped, jerked her hand
away and stared at him. "Oops," he said. "Sorry." She gave him an
uneasy laugh, like someone who has just suffered through a sick joke
she didn't want to hear. She'd think it was just static -- what else could
it be? She couldn't know how good it felt to give away pain. He was
still grinning when he swung into an empty seat and saw her watching
him in the rear view mirror.
Another monster worked at Kaplan's Cleaners. Celeste Sloboda pressed
and folded shirts across the room. Only she didn't count. She hadn't
made the choice; she'd been born a hunchback. Besides, she wore her
thick black hair down to her belt when she wasn't working, trying to
cover her deformity. She would've had better luck hiding a chainsaw in
her purse. What made it worse was that Celeste was tiny, barely five
feet; she looked like a twelve-year-old going on forty, complete with
sags and wrinkles and a hump the size of a turkey. She smiled too
much and hummed to herself and yattered about her cats as if they were
smarter than she was. Jerry said she was kind of cute if you pretended
she wasn't lopsided but Henry didn't have that kind of imagination.
He knew that the reason Celeste kept honeying up to him was that she
wanted to switch over to the cleaning side. Kaplan kept crabbing that
there was no money in shirts, that he only took them so that shirt
customers would bring in cleaning business. If Kaplan axed shirts, he'd
have to axe Celeste too -- or else move her over to Henry's side. But
Henry already had a helper and, even though Jerry was a jack-around,

at least he left Henry alone.
Celeste perched on a stool, steaming shirts on the form press they
called the susie. The laundry had delivered just three mesh bags;
usually there were between five and eight. "Guess what I had for
breakfast today?" she said.
Henry, at the spotting bench, did not reply. In the six months Celeste
had been at Kaplan's, he'd learned to pretend