Shoot the Moon by Joseph T. Klempner Page B

wallet, your watch. Whateva you got.” As he speaks, the kid glances around nervously, up and down the block.
    For Goodman, everything seems to be happening in slow motion. Gradually, he regains control of his sphincter muscle and mastery of his urinary function. He wants to speak, wants to assure the kid he’s ready to give up everything. But still he can’t get his voice to cooperate.
    The black kid doesn’t seem to know what to do with Goodman’s paralysis. He starts looking up and down the block and across the street. Goodman follows the kid’s glances, trying to see what he’s looking at. When he sees nothing, he suddenly thinks, This kid is as scared as I am. It is that realization that manages to break the spell for Michael Goodman and liberate him from his paralysis. Intellectually, he knows he should be afraid for his life; but in spite of himself, he begins to feel like he’s in a movie scene, that all this is happening to some different person and that he’s just an observer, watching it all from someplace else.
    “You heard me, man!” he hears the kid say. But while the kid tries to make it sound menacing, to Goodman it comes out plaintive, as though he’s now being begged for his money.
    Goodman the accountant does some quick calculation. He figures he has maybe $12 on him, give or take a token. He knows he should give it up - he’s always reading about people getting killed over pocket change. But no sooner does he think that than his mind starts wandering to the gun. Something about it didn’t look real. And why isn’t the kid pointing it at him? He’s reminded of one of those drawings in a magazine or comic book, where there are all sorts of mistakes you’re supposed to find: What’s wrong with this picture?
    So he lies. “I’ve only got $2,” he says. “The watch cost me four bucks on Canal Street.” That much is the truth.
    Goodman waits for the kid’s reaction. He expects disbelief and anger. He’s prepared to be hit, to be searched, to be commanded to turn his pockets inside out. But none of these things happens.
    Instead, the kid says, “Fuck,” as if he’s just scratched the coating off an instant lottery game and lost. He doesn’t seem angry at all, or even particularly surprised. Mostly, he seems tired all of a sudden.
    So Goodman says, “Sorry.”
    The kid seems to shrug his shoulders ever so slightly.
    “Is that real?” Goodman asks, gesturing toward the kid’s waistband, where the gun is again covered by the T-shirt.
    “Uh-uh,” the kid shakes his head from side to side.
    “Looks like a water gun.”
    The kid doesn’t say anything. He just stands there, looking like he’s liable to start crying at any moment. For the first time, Goodman notices how thin he is. He wonders when the last time was the kid had something to eat.
    “You hungry?” he asks the kid.
    “No.”
    “Sick?”
    “Sorta.”
    “Anything I can do to help you?”
    The kid smiles and does something that comes out like half laugh, half snort. “What I need, man, you don’t got.”
    And slowly, finally, it dawns on Goodman: This kid is a junkie.
    Suddenly, there is a single blip of a siren, and both Goodman and the kid turn their heads toward the street. A police car pulls up to the curb next to where they’re standing. The words 40 pct are stenciled on the side. Two uniformed officers step out. One is a white male, the other a black woman. They approach, each resting a hand on a holstered gun. It is the white male who speaks.
    “Everything all right here?”
    It is clear to Goodman that the question has been directed to him. And it’s just as clear that he can have the kid arrested with as little as a shake of his head, silence, or even sufficient hesitation. But he hears himself speaking.
    “Yes, sir” is what he says. “Everything’s fine.”
    The officer is apparently less than convinced. Gently, he manages to place his body between Goodman’s and the kid’s; just as gently, he