Eyeing The Flash by Peter Fenton

Author:Peter Fenton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2005-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

My Cheatin’Heart

Not until two weeks later in Bay City, Michigan, was I able to confront Jackie about my pay. I was afraid that telling him I was unhappy would jeopardize the friendship that had become essential to me. Jackie was my enabler, the person through whom I was transforming myself from frustrated honor student to prospective Alibi agent. Clearly, Jackie had come along when I was insecure and needy, yet I’d flattered myself that he’d always considered me his equal, a quick study with whom he was creating a shady symbiotic partnership. I couldn’t bear the thought that speaking my mind might end that. At the same time, I couldn’t let him keep screwing me over, treating me as a lesser being than Talking Tony, Horserace Harry, and even Chief Brown Eye in the Bendover Store. So that night after closing up the Color Game, I planned to take my grievance to Jackie and let destiny take over from there.

On this point, in truth, I’d already hedged my bet. After endless bouts of self-flagellation over earning twenty-five bucks a day rather than ten percent of the gross, I’d started holding out my rightful share of the Color Game proceeds. I’d siphoned off about $1,250 thus far, hidden in a green stuffed snake, one of the few locations on the midway where Whitey wasn’t concealing an emergency bottle of wine. Was I right or wrong to H.O. from Jackie? Either way, skimming the take signaled my true baptism on the midway. In taking that risk, I plugged myself into the alternating current of greed-fed euphoria and paranoia that was characteristic of every traveling carnival game operator. It was an unstable, addictive state that marked the rest of my stint with Party Time Shows.

Bay City was a gray, industrial splotch on Lake Huron in the crook of the Michigan thumb, the sort of northern Great Lakes community where winter always seemed one nasty storm away. Sagging plastic tarp was stapled over windows even now, in mid July; taking it down wasn’t worth the effort. Deer and duck hunting, ice fishing, and indoor shuffleboard bowling were the primary recreational and intellectual pursuits. Summer was a brief, mosquito clogged respite when locals trudged from factories to the colored lights and bug foggers of the Party Time Shows midway.

“What’s this one doing in there?” a vaguely familiar voice asked. I looked up to see Vera, pointing at me inside the Color Game, where I was trying to get the microphone to work. She had arrived at the front of the joint, arm in arm with Double-O and Jackie.

“Which one?” Jackie asked. I had help clearing quarters off the counters that day from Fred Fred, a five-foot, three-inch Ride Boy with a three-day growth of beard, dirt-stiffened blue jeans, a greasy T-shirt, and a dried-out flap of hair pulled across his balding head. I was feeling pretty cool in red jeans, red T-shirt, and a black leather wristband with a thin leather strip that extended the length of my index finger and was held in place by a snap.

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