A Better Goodbye Read Online Free Page B

did. He was still thinking it over when he began taking cases of beer from the truck and stacking them on a dolly. He’d start with six, three on the bottom, three on top. It might take longer that way, but he didn’t want to lose any beer if he could help it. He didn’t need Coyle bitching at him. He just needed two hundred bucks.

    By the time Nick found his last stop, he was running late and praying to God he was done with pissed-off store managers and postage-stamp-sized parking lots. Paisano Groceries sat next to a locksmith that told the world where it was with a large yellow sign shaped like a key. The store’s windows were papered with hand-drawn signs for brands of soda that supermarket chains couldn’t be troubled to carry—Big Red, Nehi Peach, Root 66 Root Beer. There was a beat-up Chrysler Fifth Avenue, its color a cross between dirt and Bondo, parked across the two handicapped spaces in front of the store’s double doors. Nick nosed in beside it, and by the time he had walked to the front of the truck, a small round man wearing a grocer’s apron was coming out to greet him.
    â€œOnly ten cases of regular today,” the round man said. “Nights are too cold for my beer drinkers, I guess.”
    â€œTen,” Nick said. “You got it.”
    â€œBut still five Light.”
    â€œRight.” When Nick saw the round man looking at him, puzzled, he said, “Coyle’s taking some personal time.”
    â€œOh, okay. I wasn’t sure what to think. You’re not wearing a Budweiser shirt. I’m Eddie.”
    â€œNick.”
    After they shook hands, Eddie told Nick the girl at the register would have cash waiting for him and went back inside. As Nick wheeled in his first dolly load, he heard Eddie talking soda pop with a customer. Something from North Carolina called Cheerwine. “I don’t know what it is about the South—they like high carbonation. Sometimes the bottles just explode. I come in some mornings and there’s glass on the floor and soda all over the place.” Eddie shook his head. “The carbonation.”
    Nick wouldn’t have minded staying a while, maybe have a sandwich from the deli counter and wash it down with one of Eddie’s recommendations. But ten minutes later he was pushing the last cases of empties out the door. He had the envelope with the cash in his hip pocket. He didn’t bother counting it.
    The parking lot rang with the laughter and shouts of three Hispanic kids who were buzzing around the truck. The oldest of them was no more than twelve. He was riding a peewee bike with oversized gooseneck handlebars, and his two buddies were laughing and chasing after him, so naked in their yearning for the bike that Nick felt it in his gut.
    â€œHow you guys doing?” he said.
    The oldest kid skidded to a stop by the rear of the truck. “Give me a beer,” he said. His buddies snickered, watching their leader with something approaching reverence.
    â€œA beer?” Nick took the first case of empties off the dolly and held it as he looked at the kid with a smile. “What do you want with a beer?”
    â€œDrink it. What else?”
    The kid smirked while his buddies erupted in laughter.
    â€œI better see your ID first,” Nick said.
    â€œLeft it at home,” the kid said. “Come on, man, just one—” Then his eyes got wide. His buddies’ eyes did, too. “Shit,” he said, and spun away on his bike, pedaling furiously as his buddies scrambled to catch up with him.
    Nick was watching them disappear behind the truck when he heard a voice at his back: “Your money, man, and no fockin’ around.”
    â€œJust let me put the bottles down,” Nick said.
    â€œNice and easy or I’ll kill your ass.”
    Nick lowered the case to the ground and turned around slowly. It was the gangbanger he’d seen when he was pulling in behind the bowling