‘What’s that for?’ Todd muttered. ‘I don’t drink. Drinking’s for cheap stewbums like you.’
‘Lift your glass, boy. It is a special occasion. Today you drink.’
Todd looked at him for a long moment, then picked up the glass. Dussander clicked his cheap ceramic cup smartly against it.
‘I make a toast, boy — long life! Long life to both of us! Prosit!’ He tossed his bourbon off at a gulp and then began to He rocked back and forth, stockinged feet hitting the and Todd thought he had never looked vulture, a vulture in a bathrobe, a noisome beast of carrion.
‘I hate you,’ he whispered, and then Dussander began to choke on his own laughter. His face turned a dull brick colour; it sounded as if he were coughing, laughing, and strangling, all at the same time. Todd, scared, got up quickly and clapped him on the back until the coughing fit had passed.
‘Danke schon,’ he said. ‘Drink your drink. It will do you good.’
Todd drank it. It tasted like very bad cold-medicine and lit a fire in his gut.
‘I can’t believe you drink this shit all day,’ he said, putting the glass back on the table and shuddering. ‘You ought to quit it. Quit drinking and smoking.’
‘Your concern for my health is touching,’ Dussander said. He produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the same bathrobe pocket into which the jackknife had disappeared. ‘And I am equally solicitous of your own welfare, boy. Almost every day I read in the paper where a cyclist has been killed at a busy intersection. You should give it up. You should walk. Or ride the bus, like me.’
‘Why don’t you go fuck yourself?’ Todd burst out.
‘My boy,” Dussander said, pouring more bourbon and beginning to laugh again, ‘we are fucking each other — didn’t vou know that?’
One day about a week later, Todd was sitting on a disused mail platform down in the old trainyard. He chucked cinders out across the rusty, weed-infested tracks one at a time.
Why shouldn’t I kill him anyway?
Because he was a logical boy, the logical answer came first. No reason at all. Sooner or later Dussander was going to die, and given Dussander’s habits, it would probably be sooner. Whether he killed the old man or whether Dussander died of a heart attack in his bathtub, it was all going to come out. At least he could have the pleasure of wringing the old vulture’s neck.
Sooner or later — that phrase defied logic.
Maybe it’ll be later, Todd thought. Cigarettes or not, booze or not, he’s a tough old bastard. He’s lasted this long, so… so maybe it’ll be later.
From beneath him came a fuzzy snort.
Todd jumped to his feet, dropping the handful of cinders he had been holding. That snorting sound came again.
He paused, on the verge of running, but the snort didn’t recur. Nine hundred yards away, an eight-lane freeway swept across the horizon above this weed- and junk-strewn cul-de-sac with its deserted buildings, rusty cyclone fences, and splintery, warped platforms. The cars up on the freeway glistened in the sun like exotic hard-shelled beetles. Eight lanes of traffic up there, nothing down here but Todd, a few birds… and whatever had snorted.
Cautiously, he bent down with his hands on his knees and peered under the mail platform. There was a wino lying up in there among the yellow weeds and empty cans and dusty old bottles. It was impossible to tell his age; Todd put him at somewhere between thirty and four hundred. He was wearing a strappy tee-shirt that was caked with dried vomit, green pants that were far too big for him, and grey leather workshoes cracked in a hundred places. The cracks gaped like agonized mouths. Todd thought he smelled like Dussander’s cellar.
The wino’s red-laced eyes opened slowly and stared at Todd with a bleary lack of wonder. As they did, Todd thought of the Swiss Army knife in his pocket, the Angler model. He had purchased it at a sporting goods store in Redondo Beach almost a year ago. He could hear the clerk that had waited on him in his mind: You couldn’t pick a better knife than that one, son — a knife like that could save your life someday. We sell fifteen hundred Swiss knives every damn year.