Page 68 - Demo

Clay Pigeons (continued from page 50)
end of a French fry in catsup and ate it. “Come back
and join us inside, please.”
“Why?”
“I bought you dinner.”
“So that means I have to eat in front of you?” “It means you share your company.”
“I don’t have any company.”
Rhonda tilted her head like a curious puppy and smiled at him. “You, Sonny, are the company. You, as a person, are company when you are with another person.”
Sonny dipped and ate, sipped his drink, thinking that he has company all the time, and that he too often shares his company with something he never sees.
“Those guys are assholes,” Sonny said. “Why do you think that?”
“They were talking about me.”
“Yes, they were talking about you, but they were just trying to figure out something about you, not mak- ing fun of you or anything like that. They want you to join them.”
“Share my company.” “Yes.”
“Nothing personal,” Sonny said, “but I don’t want to share my company.”
Rhonda stared back and Sonny looked away, wishing she’d leave him alone, leaning forward to look around her up the road, hoping that the bus would soon arrive. Rhonda looked back down the road, where
the cars’ headlights were blinding and darkness was falling over them like weather. “When the bus comes,” Rhonda was saying, “I might just push you in front of it and end your miserable life.”
“When are you going to leave?” Sonny said. “You want me to leave?”
Sonny wanted to be alone, but he liked her honesty, and he liked how she was being nice and buying him dinner and wanting to help him. He wondered if she’d really push him in front of the bus. It didn’t
seem real; she didn’t look like the kind of person who would do something like that. Maybe he heard wrong. Maybe she said something else, something like, “When does the bus come? Would you like a ride home?” It was sudden, but he didn’t want to make her feel bad anymore. That feeling was gone. And he wondered if thinking she wasn’t very smart was true or not.
“Are you dumb?”
“Am I what?”
“Dumb. Are you dumb?”
“That’s not very nice, Sonny. Why would you say something like that?”
“I didn’t say it, I asked you.” He licked catsup off the hamburger box.
She cleared her throat, sat back.
“What’s under your jacket, Sonny?” “Nothing.”
“It’s not nothing, it’s something, I can see it.” “It’s none of your business.”
Rhonda stood up and walked back inside McDon- ald’s. He made her feel bad, he knew that, and he knew how it felt to feel badly about something that he couldn’t control, something that was normal for him. Maybe what he thought was her being dumb was normal for her and wasn’t really dumb at all, and now he’d made her feel bad for something she couldn’t control because it was normal. Sonny sus- pected that how he thought of Rhonda was not real but something else.
Sonny surprised them when he suddenly appeared at their table holding the cash box in plain view. Rhonda moved over in the booth so he could sit down, but Sonny stood there staring at her, as if waiting for something.
Rhonda sipped her Coke and said nothing. Ken and Sid sat silently, too. Finally, when Sonny couldn’t figure out why no one talked, he said, “I thought you were dumb because you didn’t know how to shoot the pigeons, but it was your first time, so I shouldn’t think that because when we’re learning something we all look dumb. This is Mr. Lindsay’s cash box and I took it because he doesn’t pay me enough.”
61