Stetson Nights

“Reingold. Russo Reingold. Where? He’s the guy down on the corner there, smoking the cigarette and lying to the girl about his age.”

Stoney flicks his ash into the midnight wind. It curls upwards leaving trails around his eyebrows, dust on his leathery cheeks. He  turns down the brim of his Royal Stetson and gives a light chuckle to the open-mouthed gape of the permed, broken-hearted woman to his left.

“What’d you expect lady? He was gone from home so often for a reason and it wasn’t to practice bowling. Now listen, I did my job, now you know and I need to get paid. I don’t got all night.”

He grabs his pocket watch and slides it out his deep pocket by its gold-linked chain. The top glimmers in the moonlight overhead, an emblazoned S.E.L. shows its face. The woman, with tears in her eyes, looks over, head lowered.

“How much’d I owe you mister?” she says as she slowly opens her purse, stops and lifts her head to look him in the eyes. “Normal fees, I suppose? Just a hard night’s work and another broken-hearted woman to you, huh?”

He grits his teeth, summons the patience he knows he doesn’t have. Feet aching, splitting headache, all he wants to do is take a cold shower, pull on his bottle of Jack and hit the sack, forget about the day until the next one comes. Sewer rats squeal below as the infidel and his new girlfriend climb into a yellow cab, the gray sewage mist rising from the grates, pushing them gently along.

“Listen lady, I mean no disrespect but I gotta get out of here. I got things to do. You hired me for one thing, you got results. Just cause you don’t like those results doesn’t mean I gotsta do anything about that. Your problems, are not my problems. Now, the money.”

His eyes sag as he lights another cigarette, smoke stinging his eyes. The orange haze from the streetlights below shoots upward, slicing beams along the edges of the Brooklyn rooftop and the woman sits down on the black tar in her pink satin dress, kicking a rusty gray paint bucket filled with stagnant water on its side.

“I don’t give a damn about you nor your tiredness nor your God-damned results. You’re God-damned beasts, every one last of you.” He sees her sag her shoulders and reach for her purse. “I’ll get you your payment.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a wad of 100′s. They flap like a deck of cards being shuffled in the early a.m. winds. With a crooked smile, she yanks out one after the other, holds them up in the night sky with her index finger and lets them loose. He looks at her like she’s crazy, walks over and slams a foot on each bill, a big boot mark in dust left behind and bends over slowly to pick each one up, stuffing it in his jacket pocket.

“Don’t need more than I was supposed to be paid for lady. I’d suggest you keep those other ones for a rainy day. Seems like you might have a few on the way.”

He starts to leave, heading for the front of the building where he’ll climb down the fire escape into that cool, free night air, one step closer to bed and the end of another dirty job. “So long, lady,” he says, turning around to catch a glimpse of her one last time. She’s running full speed towards him, head down, barreling at him like a pro-linebacker. Her head smacks him in the stomach, pulls up and hooks him under the ribs and they’re falling. One story, two, three, four…their bodies are twisted together like a pair of mating eagles, her soiled pink satin dress smacking against his body, fluttering in the silent, early morning. His Royal Stetson tips forward and somersaults upwards towards the moon, his watch sways like a grandfather clock from its gold-linked chain, and money. All that money. Shoots out of his pocket and out of her clenched fist, hits the night currents and covers the visible sky in greens and whites. Falling as the cars screech, a woman screams, the lights dim. Somewhere in the distance a cat screams bloody murder and city’s street-cleaners are on the way.