Pepper was slouched down on the toilet, his feet spread far apart, his shoulder blades against the bowl. Above him a fluorescent light flickered, he watched the fluid as it coursed back and forth in its tube. The box of bills was on his stomach, his fingers folded and rested on its lid, the wrapping paper in a ball above the box.
He sat up, then stood with the box in both hands. Pepper turned around, placed the box on the floor, then opened the lid of the toilet and dropped the paper in. His tongue between his teeth he lifted his leg and pushed the lever with his foot.
In the locker room Pepper worked the dial of his lock quickly. With one hand he clicked the door open, shoving the box onto the locker shelf with the other. He grabbed a navy canvas jacket and threw it on, looked around the empty room and shoved the box into one of the pockets. He zipped it, slammed the locker and started back to the floor.
"Hey, Russ," Pepper said, knocking his knuckles lightly on the door.
"What's up?" Russ said not looking up from his check book.
"Uh, I think I'm going to head home early. I'm not feeling so good. I feel bad."
"Yeah?" Russ said looking up. "You must be, you'd have to be a damn fool to wear a jacket in a hot season like this one."
"I guess I am a little cold, I hadn't thought of it."
"Got a fever?"
"Maybe so."
"You'll be missing a couple of hours on your next paycheck."
"I ain't worried about that, Russ."
Russ looked at Pepper for a moment, took a deep breath. "All right. I hope you feel better."
"Thanks, Russ. I'll see you."
"Okay."
Pepper turned, his hands in his coat pockets.
"Leaving early, Benny."
Benny looked up from a crate of oil containers. "Why's that?"
"Under the weather."
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah."
"Okay. When'll you be back?"
"I'm not sure."
"When you're better?"
"Yeah, I guess so," Pepper said with a shrug. "I'll see you."
"All right, mang. Bye bye," Benny said, placing an oil container on the shelf. Pepper turned and left.
"Russ was right," Pepper said a few blocks from the garage. He unzipped the jacket and peeled it slowly. It stuck with the clusters of sweat under his arms and along his back. He grunted shaking his arm in the sleeve.
The house looked more welcoming than usual as Pepper approached, somehow softened, the large cracks and spots of missing paint disappeared, the torn screens looked mended. It was the slant of the late afternoon sun that favored the house, for Pepper it was the stack of Alexander Hamilton engravings in his pocket.
He let himself into his room and sat down heavily on his cot. A few feet away from the cot a single ant zagged across the floor. Pepper watched it, moving in bursts, stopping to flex its antennae and darting again, until it disappeared into a dark corner in the room. He continued to stare after the ant.
Pepper left his room in the final minutes of shadow and walked to the front of the house. The porch would be dark soon and in another half an hour it would be filled with customers waiting in blackened silence. It was quiet inside the house, no voices fell from the rooms into the hallway. Pepper stopped in the doorway to the living room, the curls of copper green paint were still, the dirty, yellowed curtains didn't blow. One of the girls sat in a tattered brown recliner, her eyes obscured by a mass of black tangled hair. She thumbed through an out-dated TV Guide.
"Hello," Pepper said.
She looked up, "Ding Dang Dong's on tonight."
"Yeah, what's that?" Pepper asked.
"Game show. You go on and pick the celebrity that you think can guess a radio song in the fewest notes. Johnny Chancellor is on tonight, and Rosie Hawkins."
"Sounds like a lot of fun."
"Yeah, I wish we had a TV."
"Could be neat."
"A color TV."
"Too much for me, it'd look like a little doll house, people moving around in a box."
"Uh huh," she said turning back to the magazine.
"You seen Mr. Bridgestone?"
"I think he's in the office."
"Oh, alright." Pepper leaned on the door frame for another moment. "See ya later," he said, turning.
The office door was closed, Pepper could hear a radio chat show from beneath the door. There was a calendar hanging from a nail in the door, the photograph for the current month showed a plate with glistening eggs and bacon, an oil-black cup of coffee and two triangles of toast with precise squares of butter. The text along the top of the photo read "Everything Tastes Better In Paradise." The bottom corner of the photograph read "Paradise Diner", the address and phone number followed. Below the calendar was a red sign with text in white.
HOUSE RULES
1. Payment required in advance
2. Absolutely no refunds
3. One customer per girl
4. No hitting
Pepper knocked at the door.
"Yeah?" Bridgestone called from inside.
Pepper turned the knob and pushed. Bridgestone sat wedged behind his desk, tight between the arms of his office chair, his stomach creased against the edge of his desk. There was a single chair against the wall between the door and the desk, there were three filing cabinets pushed against the opposite wall, with a small lamp on top. Bridgestone scribbled in a notebook with one hand, punching the keys of an adding machine with the other.
"Hey, Mr. Bridgestone."
"Pepper," he said tapping at the keys.
"Sorry to bug you, but you happen to have a bus schedule lying around?"
"Yeah, should be one tacked to the board there," he said. Pepper looked above the chair and beside the cork board was a photograph of an orange bridge.
"San Francisco," he said. "You know my boss has the same poster in his office. Kinda funny, huh? But I guess a place that nice must be popular. Who wouldn't want to be in a place where the sun always shines and there's never a drop of rain or a cloud of fog?"
Bridgestone tore a long strip of tape from the end of his machine, pulling it hand over hand as though he were bringing in a life preserver. "Yeah it's a good place. Schedule's right there."
"Oh, yeah," Pepper said. He turned and plucked a pin from the board. He unfolded the schedule in his hands. "Huh, no pictures, just all words and times. Getting on a bus and going. I don't see how people fly. You don't see anything from up there, you just get on a plane, wait a few hours and then you're in some other place. But in a bus, or on a car, you see every inch of it." With the schedule fully unfolded in his hands Pepper struggled to close it, trying the simple folds over and over. "Well thanks for the info, I hope you don't mind me borrowing it."
"Yep, that's fine," Bridgestone said, sharpening a pencil with a pocket knife. Bridgestone's phone rang as Pepper reached for the doorknob.
"See you later," he said over his shoulder.
"Okay, Pepper," Bridgestone said, grabbing the receiver. "Hello?"
Pepper shut the door behind him.
"Pepper!" Bridgestone called. "It's for you."
"Yeah?" Pepper said, opening the door.
"Yep," he said holding out the receiver. Pepper took it.
"Hello?"
"Pepper, it's Russ."
"Hi."
"Listen, Pepper. You've gotta be real relaxed, okay?"
"Uh, okay."
"There's a few cops down here."
"What?"
"I said relax."
"Okay."
"There's a few cops down here and they've got Benny in the break room and they're asking him about an oil change we did a couple days ago. Turns out the car that flipped this morning was in our shop."
"How do they know that?"
"There was a receipt in the glove box. So they're down here talking to Benny. Then they want to talk to me."
"About what?"
"I don't know, I guess it makes sense, we had the car they want to see if we noticed anything wrong with it."
"And they're talking to Benny?"
"And then they want to talk to me."
"Okay."
"And then they want to talk to you."
"What for?"
"You were here that day."
"Yeah."
"So they want to talk to you about the car."
"I don't remember it."
"A red Mustang, Pepper. How many of those do we ever see?"
"Well there were two last week."
"Uh huh, you do remember. Look they just want to talk to you about it, okay?"
"Okay."
"Good, they're sending an officer by your way."
"What?"
"I gave them your address."
Pepper's mouth hung open, his eyes lost their focus.
"Okay?" Russ said.
"Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right," he said, handing the phone to Bridgestone.
"What was that about?" Bridgestone asked, putting the receiver back in its cradle.
"It was Russ. From work."
"Oh."
"Needs me to come by and pick something up."
"I see."
Pepper sat down in the empty chair.
"You mind if I borrow your car?"
Bridgestone looked up from the desk and met Pepper's gaze.
"My day was pretty damn long, I just want to get over there and right back."
"I thought I saw you come home early."
"Can I borrow the car?"
Bridgestone was struggling behind the desk, leaning back in his chair, grunting as he put his hand into his pants pocket. "Must be the other one," he said trying with the other hand. Pepper heard the brush of metal. "You'll be right back?"
"Yeah, right back."
"All right," he said, tossing the keys. Pepper swatted them into his palm.
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