"I'll try," I say, and the girl smiles. She smiles and hugs me and says, "Thanks, Ed." She turns around now and points. Her voice whispers even quieter. "It's the first room on the right."
If only it was that easy.
"Well, come on, Ed," she says. "They're just in there...."
But again, I don't move.
The fear has tied itself around my feet, and I know there's nothing I can do. Not tonight. Not ever, it seems. If I try to move, I'll trip over it.
I expect the girl to scream at me. Something like, "But you promised me, Ed! You promised!" She says nothing, though. I think she understands how physically powerful her father is and how scrawny I am. All she does is stumble over to me and hug me again.
The girl tries to crawl inside my jacket as the noise from the bedroom reaches us from inside. She hugs me so tight I wonder how her bones survive. When she lets go and leaves, she says, "Thanks for at least trying, Ed."
I answer nothing because the only thing I feel now is shame. I watch her feet as they turn and walk away beneath the yellow pajamas. She turns once more and says, "Goodbye, Ed."
"Goodbye," I say through my curtain of shame.
She closes the door completely, and I crouch there. I allow myself to fall forward and rest my head on the door frame. My breath bleeds. My heartbeat drowns my ears.
I'm in bed now, swallowed by the night. How can a person sleep when all he can feel are the arms of a tiny kid in yellow pajamas holding on to him in the dark? It's impossible.
I feel insanity will come after me soon. If I don't get back down to Edgar Street in the next few nights, I fear I might go crazy. If only the kid didn't come out--but I knew she would. Or at least I should have known. She'd always come out before and cried on the porch, followed later by her mother. I know as I lie here, flat on my back, that I'd meant to meet her. I wanted her to give me the courage. To force me inside. But it failed miserably. In fact, it couldn't have been more disastrous. Now a worse feeling empties itself into me.
At 2:27 a.m. the phone rings.
It shocks through the air, and I jump up, run to it, look at it. This can't be good.
"Hello?"
The voice at the other end waits.
"Hello?" I say again.
It finally speaks, and I can picture it now, mouthing the words. The voice is dry, permanently cracked. It's friendly enough, but it still means business. It says: "Check your letter box, Ed."
A silence overhauls us, and the voice leaves me completely. There's no more breathing at the other end.
I hang up and walk slowly out my front door and over to the letter box. The stars are gone completely now and a haze of rain is falling as each of my footsteps step me closer. My hand shivers as I bend down and open the latch. I reach in.
I touch something cold and heavy.
My finger touches the trigger.
I shudder.
There's only the one bullet in the gun. One bullet for one man, and this is where I feel like the unluckiest person on earth. I tell myself, You're a cabdriver, Ed! How in the hell did you end up in all this mess? You should have just stayed on the floor in that bank.
I'm sitting at my kitchen table with a gun warming up in my hand. The Doorman's awake and demanding coffee, and all I can do is stare at the gun. It also doesn't help that whoever's setting all this up gives me just the one bullet. Don't they realize I'm most likely to shoot off one of my own feet before I even get started? I don't know. This has gone too far now. A gun, for God's sake. I can't kill anyone. For starters, I'm a coward. Second, I'm weak. Third, the day of the bank robbery was obviously a fluke--nobody's ever even showed me how to use a gun....
I'm angry now.
Why have I been chosen for this? I beg, despite knowing without question what I have to do. You were happy with the other two, I castigate myself. So now you have to do this one.
What if I don't do it? Maybe the person on the phone will come after me. Maybe that's what it's all about. Maybe it's a case of either I do the job or the rest of the bullets wind up inside me.
Shit, I can't sleep now!
I'm about to have a hernia, for Jesus' sake.