The Sleeping and the Dead by Jeff Crook Page A

tell me that.

 
    9
    B Y THE TIME I MADE it home, it was doing a little bit of everything outside—sleet, rain, even a little snow swirling, none of it sticking, not even to my windshield. Other drivers on the roads had lost their minds. I passed half a dozen accidents just in the four miles between Preston’s office and my apartment, but I didn’t stop to shoot any of them. Instead of going straight upstairs, I headed for the mercado to buy some food and sinus pills.
    It was always the same short Hispanic guy standing behind the counter. He had never once looked me in the eyes. He had a dark round Mesoamerican face with almost no trace of European in it, a face you might see looking sideways at you from the wall of a pyramid. I grabbed a shopping basket and rolled to the coolers in back, loaded up with four quarts of Tecate beer, and a twelve-pack of Diet Coke. I grabbed some limes, a block of queso blanco and a pack of fresh tortillas. The sinus pills were behind the bulletproof glass at the cash register.
    By the time I made it to the front of the store, our landlord, Walter Pinch, was leaning against the counter. “Afternoon, Miss Jackie,” he almost sang. He shook my hand with his moist, bony one, then unloaded my basket, setting everything on the counter.
    Walter Pinch was a black man no bigger than a twelve-year-old boy. He dressed like a COGIC preacher in a black three-piece Italian suit, red silk tie and red handkerchief sticking three inches up from his top pocket, half a pound of gold on his bony knuckles and a diamond as big as a split pea in his grill. He used hair straighteners and walked on his toes like he was walking onto a stage.
    This close to him, I could smell the gin on his breath. I instantly grokked his plight—a straight gin man with a mickey in the back pocket, never got drunk, just a nip now and then until the end of the day when the pint was empty and his liver was another day harder with the sclerosis that would ultimately lay him dick-up in the earth. I liked him the first time I met him, when he rented me the apartment and offered to carry up my stuff, weak and feeble as he was.
    He introduced me to the man behind the counter. “This here is Jackie Lyons. She’s taken the apartment upstairs,” Walter said. “Jackie, this here is Nachos.”
    â€œHappy to meet you,” Nachos said. He finally looked at me and smiled.
    â€œShe just moved in,” Walter continued. “This is Nachos’s store. He’s been here about six years now, ain’t it?”
    He nodded and said, “ Siete .”
    â€œNachos is good folk. You need anything, Nachos has got it. If he ain’t got it, he’ll get it.”
    â€œThat’s good to know,” I said. “You look like you’re having yourself a fine day, Mr. Pinch.”
    â€œEvery day is a fine day, Miss Jackie. Life is too short to have shitty days.”
    â€œSometimes life gives you shitty days.”
    â€œThat’s true enough,” Walter agreed. “All the more reason not to make shitty ones yourself.” He squeezed my arm as he staggered by, headed toward the beer coolers at the back. Nachos rang up my stuff.
    â€œSo what’s your real name?” I asked him.
    â€œMynor.”
    â€œIs this your place?”
    â€œI’m just the manager. I started out sweeping floors here, now I still sweep floors, but I’m the manager. The owner lives in Singapore. So you live upstairs?” I nodded. “The music, is it too loud?”
    â€œIt’s OK,” I said. I barely even noticed the Tejano music anymore.
    â€œI can turn it down. My wife listens to it.”
    â€œI don’t mind.” He seemed to like that I didn’t mind. He smiled as he rang up my beer. He had perhaps the worst set of teeth I’d ever seen in my life. He looked like someone had dipped his teeth in acid and stuck them back into his face to rot.
    â€œWhere are