“Top notch.”
They bumped fists. Mickey turned to leave.
“Give ’em hell out there, Mickey,” Keene called after him.
Mickey looked back at the men in the wheelchairs, and felt filled with purpose.
“Every day soldiers,” he said. “Every goddamned day.”
Chapter 11
Mickey left the VA through the north entrance and climbed aboard the D8 Metro bus bound for Union Station. Always sensitive to pity or suspicion, he was happy that not one rider looked his way as he showed his ride card to the driver, and walked to an empty seat diagonally across from the rear exit. His favorite spot.
Mickey could see virtually everyone on the bus from that position. As he’d been taught a long time ago, to stay alive you made sure you could watch your six as well as your nine, twelve, and three.
In his mind he heard a gruff voice say, “Understand your situation, soldier, and then deal with it as it is, not as you want it to be. If it’s not as you want it to be, then fix it, goddamnit. Identify the weakness, and be the change for the better.”
Damn straight, Hawkes, Mickey thought. Damn straight.
The doors sighed shut. The bus began to roll.
Mickey liked buses. No one really noticed you on a bus, especially this bus.
The inflicted and the wounded were a dime a dozen on the D8, the Hospital Center Line. Cancer patients. Alzheimer’s patients. Head injuries. Amputees. They all rode it. He was just a bit player in the traveling freak show.
Which is why Mickey left the bus at K and 8th, and walked over to Christopher’s Grooming Lounge on H.
A burly barber with a lumberjack beard turned from the cash register and gave his client change. He saw Mickey and grinned.
“Hey, Mick! Where you been, brother?”
“Out and about, Fatz. You clean me up?”
“Shit, what’s a Fatz for, right? You sit right here.”
When Mickey got out of the chair twenty minutes later, his wispy beard was gone and his cheeks were fresh and straight-razor smooth. His hair was six inches shorter, swept back, and sprayed in place.
“There,” Fatz said. “You look somewhere between a hipster and a preppie.”
“Right down the middle,” Mickey said, turning his head. “I like it.”
He gave Fatz a nice tip and promised to return sooner rather than later. The barber hugged him, said, “I got your back. I’ll always have your back.”
“Thanks, Fatz.”
“You’re a good dude, remember that.”
“I try,” Mickey said, gave him a high five, and left.
He walked the six blocks to the Capitol Self Storage facility at 3rd and N Streets, and went inside to a small unit, where he unlocked and rolled up the door. Stepping inside, he pulled the door down and switched on the light.
Six minutes later, Mickey emerged. Gone were the dirty denim jeans, the canvas coat, and the ragged Nikes, replaced by khakis, a lightly used blue windbreaker sporting the embroidered logo of a golf academy in Scottsdale, Arizona, and a pair of virtually new ASICS cross-trainers. It was remarkable what you could find in a Goodwill store these days.
Mickey put on a wide-brim white baseball cap and a pair of cheap sunglasses. Around his waist, he wore a black fanny pack with a water bottle in a holder. Around his neck hung an old Nikon film camera with no film inside.
There, he thought as he locked the unit, I could be any Joe Jackass come to town to see the sights.
Mickey left the storage facility and walked south, aware of the fanny pack, the water bottle, and the camera, and doing his best to contain his excitement. Be chill, brother. Stroll, man. What would Hawkes say? Be who you’re supposed to be. You’re Joe Jackass on vacay. All the time in the world.