(2004) Citizen Vince Read Online Free

action unfolded (the play was about a family that owned a restaurant; there was a gay brother, a brother studying to be a priest, and a sister who was unmarried and pregnant), the extras just talked and talked, oblivious. Vince asked Tina what she and the other extras talked about when they were in the background of a particularly crowded restaurant scene. She said they were just supposed to mutter nonsense to make background noise and make their lips move. Vince’s girlfriend said, over and over, Banana, apple, strawberry . Or she changed the order: Strawberry, apple, banana.
    So that’s what Vince began imagining the people on the street were saying all those years: Banana, apple, strawberry. It seemed to confirm what he’d always figured: that normal people, regular people—schoolteachers, firemen, accountants—were simply extras in the lives of guys like him. That’s what the straight life always seemed like, a collection of meaningless words and concepts: job, marriage, mortgage, orthodontist, PTA, motor home. How are you? Fine. How are you? Fine. Nice weather we’re having. Banana, apple, strawberry. Fry, frost, fill. Banana, apple, strawberry.
    But today he listens to the conversations of the regulars—two guys on their way to the dump to look for a washing machine; a man advising another man to put his money in gold; a woman showing pictures of her grandchildren—and he thinks that there might be serviceable washers at the dump, that the woman’s grandchildren must be adorable, that gold is a great investment. It takes a sort of courage to live a quiet life.
    There used to be an inspirational poster on the door to the library at Rikers. It showed a night sky, and across the bottom were the words: The community of men is made of a billion tiny lights.
    The community of men…at night on the ward (institutional sleep is like morphine, dreamless and cold) Vince imagined a real place, a town somewhere that he could actually see, like the old TV shows Leave It to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet, a 1950s city where there were always two parents and houses had picket fences, where policemen smiled and tipped their hats.
    And now…here he is. Spokane, Washington.
    Tic has finished the dishes and is putting them away. Vince goes to his locker and grabs his paperback book—he always reads on his coffee break—but he walks to the sink instead, sets his book down, puts one foot on a stool, and lights a smoke. Stares at his young assistant. “I ask you something, Tic?”
    Attention makes Tic uneasy.
    “How many dead people would you say you know?”
    The young man takes a step back.
    Vince shifts his weight. This is not what he meant to ask, necessarily. He takes his foot off the stool. “I don’t mean, specifically, how many dead people. What I mean is, you ever get some crazy thought stuck in your head—like today, I just kept thinking about how many dead people I know. Anything like that ever happen to you?”
    Tic leans forward seriously. “Every fuckin’ day, man.”
     
    NEVER LET YOUR job get in the way of work. That might be Vince’s motto, if he believed in mottos. By noon, he has finished his job at Donut Make You Hungry, and closes the place. Outside, in the blue cool daylight, he feels better—although he still finds himself counting. The whole thing is like some pop song he can’t get out of his head. Fifty-seven at last count (Ann Mahoney’s father). He walks south, crosses the river, and glances once more over his shoulder. Finally he steps inside a small brick storefront with a stenciled sign that reads DOUG’S PASSPORT PHOTOS AND SOUVENIRS .
    A college kid is getting his picture taken. Vince sits at the counter, grabs a magazine, and waits for Doug—fat, white-bearded, and red-faced Doug, like Santa’s bad seed—to finish making the guy’s phony ID. “How she hangin’, Vince?”
    Vince ignores him as he reads a story about the new Ford Escort, which is supposed to get forty-six miles to