Mick by Chris Lynch Page B

his hat go even further down over his face. I looked at him, looked for him to be nervous. But he wouldn’t show it. I turned back to Sully, who would.
    “Toy?” Sully asked cautiously. “Not for nothin’, you understand, but what if... say you knew something like that was gonna happen, like this afternoon?”
    “ This afternoon?” I cut in.
    “Like, just suppose. What do you suppose you might do, if you knew?”
    Toy chewed on the cigar, rolling it around in his mouth a bit. “I guess I’d just do what I’m doing right now.” He shrugged.
    I couldn’t be that casual. “So, Sul, what are you gonna do?” I asked, kind of asking myself by asking him.
    Sully tilted his head sideways, looked off into space, like he hadn’t thought about it before. Then he returned with his answer, turning back to me and shrugging, with a simpleton smile. “Well, I’m here , ain’t I? That’s doing something, I think.”
    Toy reached over and smacked Sully lightly on the side of the head, laughing again. He was right. For Sully—not the moxiest ol’ boy around—staying to hang with Toy under the circumstances was something. Which seemed to leave only me with a crisis of nerve.
    “Maybe we should do something else for a change, y’know, not just hang out here on the same old sidewalk, in plain view, where everybody knows we’re here. ...How ’bout a movie? Or bowling, maybe.”
    “Take off if you want to, Mick,” Toy said. “I understand. It won’t bother me.”
    This was a problem for me. Toy just would not give it up, and now I was coming up even bigger chicken than Sully. Which was big chicken. “God, will you stop being so cool and collected all the time, Toy? I hate that. Doesn’t this stuff have any effect on you at all? Don’t you feel anything—”
    “Got a quarter?” Toy cut in.
    “Huh?”
    “For a phone call. I have no change.”
    “Goddamn it, Toy,” I said, hopping to my feet, waving my arms in front of him.
    He got up, stood toe to toe with me. Calmly but firmly he said, “I won’t discuss animals. I don’t care what they do. I won’t waste not one of my days thinking about them. I won’t.” He extended his palm for the coin.
    “I got it,” Sully said, flipping the money up to Toy, who walked the few paces to the pay phone on the wall by the store entrance.
    “He’s a friggin’ cuke, ain’t he,” Sully asked as we both watched Toy.
    “ He is? Since when have you been such a cool cucumber, being so stand-up after Augie warned you?”
    “Ya,” Sully said, nodding in amazement as if we were talking about some third party who was not himself, “where did that shit come from? Must be Toy. Something contagious about him.”
    Toy was waving me over to the phone. I went, as did Sully, who was not invited but never needed to be.
    “It’s for you,” Toy said, jamming the receiver into my hand. “Evelyn.”
    I froze, with the phone a foot away from my ear. Suddenly I was thirsty, as if an entire cylinder of Morton’s salt had been poured down my gullet. I was vaguely aware of Sully’s low laughter about a thousand miles behind me, and I heard myself making a scratchy throat-clearing sound.
    “Get on with it,” Toy said, reaching out and bending my arm for me to bring the phone to my ear.
    “Hello?” I said, though it was still ringing.
    “Hola,” the voice came on. My throat closed even tighter when I realized it was Evelyn’s brother, Ruben.
    “Ah, can I speak to Evelyn?”
    This was followed by a long silence.
    “Who is this?” he finally said suspiciously.
    I knew answering that question wouldn’t help. So I didn’t. “Could I please—”
    Click.
    I asked Toy for the number and Sully for the coin, and called right back before losing my newfound nerve.
    “Buenos días,” he said brightly, picking up on the first ring.
    “Hello, I’d like to speak to—”
    Click.
    Sully and Toy were all subdued smiles when I slammed the receiver down.
    “Shut up,” I said.
    “I