Florida Heatwave by Michael Lister Page B

to yourself, she said; you deserve it. So I went to the bank, filled out the withdrawal slip, and gave it to this little teller with a laughable emo haircut. He told me he was sorry but there was no money in my account. I said, Thatcher, there must be some mistake. Then I spoke with the bank manager, who pulled up the account records, and sure enough, the cash was gone.
    She said, “When your wife closed out your joint account, we apparently asked her if you would be wanting to close out your personal account as well.”
    “My wife?” I asked Ms. Condon if I could take a look at her computer screen. There it was, the bad news in black and white and the copies of the two driver’s licenses, Elvis’s and Angel’s. Only Angel’s name was Marta.
    “And it looks like you came in on Friday, and you closed it.” Ms. Condon looked at the driver’s license and then at me and then back at the license.
    That son of a bitch Engdahl, the fucking thief, was trying to beat me out of $3000. I didn’t see that I had any choice here. He certainly wasn’t going to give me, some Joe Schmo he didn’t know from Adam, the money in his account. So I set his house on fire. I didn’t need to burn it down; I needed to flush him out while I stood across the street with my Chief’s Special. When he ran out the door in his boxer shorts, I’d shoot the bastard, and I’d let Angel live so she could think about what a calamitous series of events she set in motion with her greedy behavior. I filled a five-gallon gas can at the Hess, rolled up a blanket from home, and walked to Engdahl’s house. This was before dawn. I doused the blanket, draped it over the propane grill by the back door, threw the match, and scooted across the street. I sat at the curb between a Chevrolet and a pickup. When the propane tank ignited, it must have blown out the back of the house. The ground shook. Flames leaped over the roof. Lights came on next door. The front door flew open, and I raised my pistol, and then these two kids run out, followed by the parents, and they’re all Chinese! Engdahl didn’t live there anymore. The joke was on me.
    After that I was on edge a lot of the time and swabbing my throbbing tooth every twenty minutes with Orajel. I found out that if I kept a cheek full of bourbon on the tooth, it worked just as well, so I hid a fifth of Fighting Cock behind the counter at work. Then one night I caught this homeless half-wit stealing an Almond Joy, and I pulled out the Special and put it in his face. He cried like a baby. I didn’t want cops involved, for obvious reasons, so I let the derelict go. But he squealed to Stavros. I denied everything, of course, but there it all was on the surveillance video. I lost my job. Since then I’ve been living in a financial prison. I was back to selling the
Sun-Sentinel
on street corners. I had no future, just like those children I killed today have no future, only that was something they didn’t know and didn’t have to be tormented by.
    I want you to know that I’m not a monster. I’m just like you. And I’m not crazy. People might say I don’t know what I’m doing, but I don’t shit myself. I don’t piss my pants, do I? I know what I’m doing. And something has to be done so something like this doesn’t happen again, where someone can’t arrive at a point where they might be capable of slaughter. This should not happen. You should put me up against a wall and shoot me. You really should.
    Then I ran into Dorie at Los Incos de Oro. She was eating veal hearts and yuca. She was like my only friend in the world. She said she’d heard about the unfortunate business at the Hess. I said, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
    Dorie likes taking walks, so I started going along. We’d walk to the beach, stroll the Broadwalk and stare at all the overweight French-Canadians in their bikinis and Speedos. I began to imagine the two of us together. Dorie isn’t much to look at, but she’s sweet and