The guy has no idea what’s about to happen to him, thought the man called Louis. He spends his last bit of cash on Cheez-its, Band-Aids and makeup – this is going to be a fucking joke.
Louis had been waiting patiently for Steve to arrive back home, lurking in the run-down van for nearly two hours as Steve took his good ol’ time dicking around in the grocery store. The man called Louis would have waited for any amount of time, having prepared stacks of dried goods and bottled water for just this occasion. In fact, Steve’s taking only two hours was a blessing, now that he returned, Louis could take what belonged to him, what he waited all this time for.
The flat quilt of grey overhead mimicked the haze around Louis within the car, two hours was plenty of time to kill and Malboros were indeed a tool for such killing, in more ways than one. The pile of ashes and butts threatened to spill out of the tray and decorate the floor of the piece of shit white-panel van Louis had rented. So what if they did? He had no plans to leave the vehicle in one piece.
Louis watched Steve from the side-view mirror outside the van. Sort of chubby, Louis thought, but I bet the guy can move like a wrecking ball. The man called Louis stood at five-eleven and broke one eighty on an average day, but he would have to be careful around this Steve fella; if it came down to a struggle it wouldn’t be pretty, if Louis got first blood, he knew it would be over. Louis had always been in favor of the sneak-attack approach, especially with big guys like this. In fact, the only time he remembered utilizing a direct assault resulted in his lying in a ditch with a face like bloody-hamburger and flashing red, white and blue lights coming to carry him off.
Yeah, fuck that.
The man called Louis knew that Steve’s family was out of the house, that his more-than-chubby misses was dragging his two children through summer activities that they thoroughly loathed, little league baseball or basketball. Louis thought it was probably an excuse for the Chunk Queen to stuff her face with concession stand snacks; machine wrapped hot dogs, ice cream and candy, the stuff that’s the color of irradiated pigs’ meat. The simple image of crumbs rolling down the chins of Mrs. Steve almost made him toss up his recently consumed deer jerky.
He held it down and settled on a chain of raspy coughs and a fleck of phlegm that he gladly let fly onto the vacant passenger seat. It’s a dumb habit, Louis knew that, but addiction is addiction and even time in jail couldn’t fix that. It wasn’t the worst of his habits.
Steve finally wrapped the corner sidewalk up to his cracked driveway. The lawn was freshly mowed and the scent of gasoline still floated in the air, pleasant like the cigarettes. Louis watched him check the mail and gaze up at the decades old bi-level, a house just like the rest of the neighborhood with a recently replaced roof that, most likely, set Steve back a few hundred if not a few thousand. The man called Louis chuckled to himself, the experience of watching this man was harkening back to his last trip to the Zoo and staring on as a pacing bear considered its confines and let its rage-soaked eyes settle on the patrons of the animal-prison, patrons who looked on without a shred of pity for the animal in captivity.
Steve the Bear, another animal in captivity.
Louis continued to watch. He would lose sight of his quarry as Steve went inside, but that was okay. Once Steve was inside, Louis would make his move, with plenty of time before Mrs. Steve or the small ones would return. He had gone over the possibilities in his mind, ways to do this without involving someone of so little consequence, but there were things he needed to know and only Steve would know them. He watched as Steve traversed the front door and his heart beats became heavy and full. Loius could feel the adrenaline charge his veins, the reverse side of fear, the stinging chill that raised his light arm hair on end and left him gripping the steering wheel with unusual vigor.
He left the keys and the ignition and set foot outside the white van, time to die, Steve.
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