Night Shift

'I don't know. Some strange things have been happening. Things connected with the stabbing of my brother.'

'What things?'

'Mr Nell, I can't tell you. You'd think I was crazy.'

His reply, quick, firm, interested: 'Are you?'

Jim paused. 'No,' he said.

'Okay, I can check the names through Stratford R&I. Where can I get in touch?'

Jim gave his home number. 'You'd be most likely to catch me on Tuesday night.' He was in almost every ~ight, but on Tuesday evenings Sally went to her pottery class.

'What are you doing these days, Jimmy?'

'Teaching school.'

'Good. This might take a few days, you know. I'm retired now.'

'You sound just the same.'

'Ah, but if you could see me!' He chuckled, 'D'you still like a good piece of pie a' la mode, Jimmy?'

'Sure,' Jim said. It was a lie. He hated pie a la mode.

'I'm glad to hear that. Well, if there's nothing else, I'll -' 'There is one more thing. Is there a Milford High in Stratford?'

'Not that I know of.'

'That's what I -'

'Only thing name of Milford around here is Milford Cemetery out on the Ash Heights Road. And no one ever graduated from there.' He chuckled dryly, and to Jim's ears it sounded like the sudden rattle of bones in a pit.

'Thank you,' he heard himself saying. 'Goodbye.'

Mr Nell was gone. The operator asked him to deposit sixty cents, and he put it in automatically. He turned, and stared into a horrid, squashed face plastered up against the glass, framed in two spread hands, the splayed fingers flattened white against the glass, as was the tip of the nose.

It was Vinnie, grinning at him.

Jim screamed.

Class again.

Living with Lit was doing a composition, and most of them were bent sweatily over their papers, putting their thoughts grimly down on the page, as if chopping wood. All but three. Robert Lawson, sitting in Billy Steam's seat, David Garcia in Kathy Slavin's, Vinnie Corey in Chip Osway's. They sat with their blank papers in front of them, watching him.

A moment before the bell, Jim said softly, 'I want to talk to you for a minute after class, Mr Corey.'

'Sure, Norm.'

Lawson and Garcia tittered noisily, but the rest of the class did not. When the bell rang, they passed in their papers and fairly bolted through the door. Lawson and Garcia lingered, and Jim felt his belly tighten.

Is it going to be now?

Then Lawson nodded at Vinnie. 'See you later.'

'Yeah.'

They left. Lawson closed the door, and from behind the frosted glass, David Garcia suddenly yelled hoarsely, 'Norm eats it!' Vinnie looked at the door, then back at Jim. He smiled.

He said, 'I was wondering if you'd ever get down to it.'

'Really?' Jim said.

'Scared you the other night in the phone booth, right, dad?'

'No one says dad any more, Vinnie. It's not cool. Like cool's not cool. It's as dead as Buddy Holly.'

'I talk the way I want,' Vinnie said.

'Where's the other one? The guy with the funny red hair.'

'Split, man.' But under his studied unconcern, Jim sensed a wariness.

'He's alive, isn't he? That's why he's not here. He's alive and he's thirty-two or three, the way you would be if -'

'Bleach was always a drag. He's nothing'.' Vinnie sat up behind his desk and put his hands down flat on the old graffiti. His eyes glittered. 'Man, I remember you at that lineup. You looked ready to piss your little old corduroy pants. I seen you lookin' at me and Davie. I put the hex on you.'

'I suppose you did,' Jim said. 'You gave me sixteen years of bad dreams. Wasn't that enough? Why now? Why me?'

Vinnie looked puzzled, and then smiled again. 'Because you're unfinished business, man. You got to be cleaned up.'

'Where were you?' Jim asked. 'Before.'

Vinnie's lips thinned. 'We ain't talkin' about that. Dig?'

'They dug you a hole, didn't they, Vinnie? Six feet deep. Right in the Milford Cemetery. Six feet of -'

'You shut up!'

He was on his feet. The desk fell over in the aisle. 'It's not going to be easy,' Jim said. 'I'm not going to make it easy for you.'

'We're gonna kill you, dad. You'll find out about that hole.'

'Get out of here.'

'Maybe that little wifey of yours, too.

'You goddamn punk, if you touch her -' He started forward blindly, feeling violated and terrified by the mention of Sally.

Vinnie grinned and started for the door. 'Just be cool. Cool as a fool.' He tittered.

'If you touch my wife, I'll kill you.'

Vinnie's grin widened. 'Kill me? Man, I thought you knew, I'm already dead.'

He left. His footfalls echoed in the corridor for a long time.

'What are you reading, hon?'

Jim held the binding of the book, Raising Demons, out for her to read.

'Yuck.' She turned back to the mirror to check her hair.

'Will you take a taxi home?' he asked.

'It's only four blocks. Besides, the walk is good for my figure.'

'Someone grabbed one of my girls over on Summer Street,' he lied. 'She thinks the object was rape.'

'Really? Who?'

'Dianna Snow,' he said, making a name up at random. 'She's a level-headed girl. Treat yourself to a taxi, okay?'