Night of the Living Debt Part I

The thick night air was as calm as it was suffocating. The distant lights from the city meant next to nothing so far out in the desert. The two men arguing in the dark could hardly see each other. Ambrose was a tall Nevada native. He looked half cowboy, half hobo and all drunk in his long beige coat, crumpled hat, and shaggy throat beard. Duane was built like a linebacker a foot too short, with his greasy dark hair slicked back. He’d had it that way since he was a child and found, now that he was suddenly over the hill that it worked for him as well as any other comb over.

“I won’t settle for so little.” Ambrose said.

“And what, pray tell is it you’d like from me? A Spanish Dubloon? A pearl the size of your head? Maybe the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? It’s the easiest fifty bucks you’ll ever make. You don’t even have to do anything.” Duane rubbed his lucky Ruby ring. The presence of his birthstone made him feel immortal and unstoppable. And by keeping it on the middle finger of his right hand he knew he’d have plenty of opportunity to show it off living in New York.

“A hundred. Bare minimum.” Ambrose tugged on his wild beard in a manner that struck him as defiant and struck Duane as absurd. Never the less, the shorter man smiled, oozing false pleasure as he’d learned to do in his youth as a salesman for an electronics company.

“You drive a hard bargain, friend. I like it. It’s hardly worth a hundred, but because I respect you, I’ll give it to you anyway.” Ambrose’s eyes lit up as Duane spoke. His hand stopped moving as fast, but gripped the beard with greater ferocity. A hundred dollars would mean more to Ambrose than he’d care to admit. He knew he’d fallen a long way, but he knew he could rebuild it all; his house, his career, his life. He silently vowed that this deal would be the first step in his new life. No more booze. No more soup kitchens. No more handouts. A man lives or dies by his own ability. He’d forgotten it for a time after the fire had taken everything he had, but the old Ambrose was back, ready for his life to begin again. Ambrose smiled and was about to agree when Duane cut him off. “I can only give you half now. Half after.”

That stopped Ambrose right where he was. The emerging smile slowly curved the other way. Sucking his teeth, Ambrose closed his eyes and moved his hand from his beard to his mouth sticking his forefinger under his nose and his thumb beside it. Duane checked his watch. 9:43. Ambrose slid his finger from under his nose up into it, swirling it around and looking for prey. Duane checked his watch. 9:44. Ambrose’s finger plunged deeper into his nostril. The motion nearly mesmerized Duane. Ambrose removed his forefinger from its sheath and without any hesitation moved his hand to his ear, and stuck his pinky in. After a moment of digging for lost treasures, Ambrose removed his pinky and, making devil horns put his forefinger and pinky next to each other and stared long and hard at each, comparing one to the other. After a moment of that, Duane had the sense to check his watch again. 9:47. Ambrose continued to study his now slimy fingers. Duane considered the virtues of suicide until his watch told him it was 9:51.

“I’ve made my decision.” Ambrose informed him, moving his hand away from his face again. Duane noticed that his fingers were now clean again, and forced himself to believe that they’d been wiped on the ragged clothes the Reno hobo was wearing.

“Good news, I hope?” Duane asked the other man, grinning again.

“Absolutely. Fifty now, fifty after.” Ambrose grinned back at Duane, or more accurately, the fat wallet that the shorter man produced from his pocket. The smile on his face threatened to split his head in half as Duane pulled out an old, but remarkably well kept fifty dollar bill from the top of the clipped pile of cash he kept in his Italian leather wallet. It was the first fifty Ambrose had seen since he’d been laid off three years earlier. Then suddenly, it was the first fifty he’d touched since he’d been laid off. Ambrose could just feel the great destiny waiting him. A real life rags to riches story. Prime material for second rate motivational speakers everywhere. Someday, he’d be a legend. Someday they’d say that the greatest corporate empire ever to be would never have existed if it weren’t for the tenacity of one man who couldn’t be broken by poverty. Or perhaps he’d run for office. Now that he was back in the money, all the old rhetoric about the land of opportunities came back to him, and those bleeding hearts with their socialistic nonsense could kiss his ass. It’s not as if he owed them for three years of food or the time the volunteers spent on it. He knew now that there was no stopping it. His destiny was set. And no one could reasonably ask for a greater destiny than the one he was sure was his, whatever it happened to be. His smile grew still wider.

And that’s when Duane shot Ambrose. Once. Clean in the chest. The sound barely carried in the dense night air. Ambrose crumbled like a house of cards, clutching his hard-won fifty dollars to his heart.

“Well,” Duane said, mostly because he felt something needed to be said to fill the awkward silence. Or perhaps it was that, like a critic reviewing to a performance, he felt it necessary to voice a reaction immediately afterward to keep the experience fresh in his mind. “That was certainly underwhelming.” He squatted next to the body of the deranged hobo and examined his work, careful not to touch anything or even breathe on the dead man. He saw the fifty dollar bill soaked in blood and cursed softly. “Shit. What a waste.”
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