"And so somebody shot at you?"
"That's right. Yep."
"Someone actually engaged a firearm. A gun. With you in the vicinity."
"Sure did. A-and let me tell you, I put a move on pretty darn fast."
Martin struggled with trying to read the expiration date on the milk. Of course it's encrypted so that you need a degree in statistical databases to tell how it's going to taste . . . " And you hadn't done anything to motivate this behavior?"
"I waved. I mean, I was just sitting in my car. These guys came up and acted like they wanted to talk. Bullet went right through. My windows were down. Don't you think maybe it's kinda strange?"
"No. Stranger things happen all the time." Just not necessarily to someone you know.
Martin urged a cart with a reluctant wheel through the discount supermarket. "How did you manage to find me, Mac?
Mac seemed mystified by the answer's obviousness; "I saw your car."
That's how. Just driving by. Out of a hundred cars in the lot.
He whispered. "They were black guys."
"Mac—"
"I—I'm just saying they were, not nothing else. I aint saying nothing about all black guys. It's okay for me to say that."
"What you're saying is that you're just placing things, in a contextual sense, huh. No more, no less." Martin wasn't sure why he was being so hard on him. The truth was, Mac sort of idolized black people.
"There's some more that happened, but I don't want to say right now. Not here"
"Sure thing."
Martin observed a shopper creep down their lane past the diet syrups. The subject had the wavery gait of an elderly man, and more than half his face and all of his skull were wrapped in gauze that's beginning to show need of refreshing—the oozy yellow parts.
Mac apparently sensed the displacement of Martin's attention. He erupted toward the subject: "Hey! How you doing? Hot enough for ya?" Martin wilted.
"I'm doing great today. You fellas gonna make it?"
"You got that right," Mac echoed, leaning a little forward, but the shopper ambled on. A slight malodorous waft followed.
"Take it easy now—" Mac called, seemingly disappointed by the brevity of the encounter.
"I think its face cancer he's got," Mac whispered. "He drives a old beat up Pinto. You shop here a lot, Martin? Kinda outta your way, but hey I don't blame you, get away from the same-old same-old. Plus on this side of the river the prices are better, I don't know why."
The grocery resembled some huge steel barn converted from other use, in an area of gentle decay. This was where the rejects of the community shopped. People you only see at at 3 AM. Martin felt skittish, Mac finding him out, here.
"Just getting a few items." Cans, TV dinners, coffee, more cans. He indicates the largely empty cart. "See?"
"Yeah, I see."
"Gotta eat. Gotta get it at the getting place." The silence extended itself uneasily.
"I'm bugging you, aren't I?"
"Mac, don't shit me. Did somebody really shoot at you, or are you just making it up?"
He received a stunned look he'd never seen before. Quickly backtracking: "Sorry. I'm just in a shitty mood, OK?"
Mac, slowly edging affable again: "How come?"
Out of the corner of his vision Martin saw the black woman in a plaid short-jumpsuit who constantly smiled and never bathed.
"You ever just hang around people—certain groups of people—just to make yourself feel bad?"
"Gotta think on that one, but I don't believe so."
"Pitiful people, the abused, the ex-abused, the abusers, the just-plain-stupid, the dont-give-a-shits, the congestively heart failed, the throatless, the permanently catherized, the obsessive lotto-scratcher, the mean-as-hell."
Mac looked around broadly, as if surprised by his surroundings.
"But for the grace of God. And other assorted mysteries of our being here."
"Well. We aint like that, me and you."
"Mac. Do me a favor. I beg you. Do not, repeat, do not tell Kelly you saw me here. OK?"
"Don't hardly ever get to see her. Not often enough, anyways." Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.
"Mac." Martin motioned him closer, and whispered, "Have I ever told you about my sister's embarassing but permanent viral condition of the genitals?"
Days later Mac was still trying to erase any last doubt that Martin was messing with him.
