The Drop

by Dennis Lehane

Left behind a girlfriend, a kid he never saw who lived with her mother in New Hampshire, and a car in the shop waiting on a new spoiler. That’s how everyone knew he was dead; Richie never would have left the car behind; he loved that fucking car.

Marv shrugged his way into the leather car coat he always wore, one that had been in style back when the planes hit the towers in New York City, had been out of style by the time the towers fell.

But experience had shown Bob that women saw the love in his heart, all right, they just preferred a heart with a more attractive casing around it. And it wasn’t just the women, it was him. Bob didn’t trust himself around breakable things. Hadn’t in years.

Those things laughed at you if your ambitions failed to amount to much; a successful man could hide his past, but an unsuccessful man spent the rest of his life trying not to drown in his.

He fiddled with his watch, which had stopped keeping time a year ago. A parting gift from their father the day he decided he didn’t want to be a father anymore.

Marv would sooner sell his dick to science than work a coolie career for coolie wages the rest of his life.

“I don’t need to see anything! You hear me?” Cousin Marv said, “I don’t need to see Europe or fucking Thailand or fucking whatever’s in that bag. I’m standing right here.”

“That is life—someone like me coming along when you’re not looking and you’re not ready. I’m a hundred seventy pounds’ worth of End Times, Bob.”

I am, Marv realized in that moment, as dangerous as the most dangerous man alive right now. I have taken life.

Rocco put his front paws on the edge of the sink and nibbled Bob’s wrist with those sharp, spiky puppy teeth. Bob scooped him up with his free hand and pressed their faces together. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. You’re worth it.”

Bob sat in the other Barcalounger. As a kid, he’d liked this room, but as the years passed and it stayed exactly the same except for a new TV every five years, it felt like heartbreak to him. Like a calendar page no one bothered to turn anymore.

“I’m sorry, but you kids,” Bob said. “You know? You don’t have any manners. You go out of the house dressed like you’re still in your living room. You say terrible things about women. You hurt harmless dogs. I’m tired of you, man.”