"You're so weird. What were you doing in a place like that?"

"What was I supposed to do, sit in the car by myself and freeze to death?"

Her little sister didn't have an answer to that.

*

Inside, Jonas &Sons Pawn was dark. Outside, daylight was gray.

The girl could make out aluminum ladders and chain saws and lawn tools inside.  Over on one wall, there were enough guns lined up to start a war.  

Almost a hour early, she was feeling a little stupid.  A little.  She looked around for a sign that said CLOSED.  She didn't find one. But it would have made her feel better.

 On the wall about chest level, she found a faded place where somebody had marked 'OPEN 10-6. ' with a felt tip.   From the handwriting, she supposed it was one of the '& Sons' who did that. 

What good was that?

Her body appeared  in the  silvery glass doors blocking  the entrance.   She adjusted her skirt.  She did something with the escaping hair.  She pouted her lips imaging someone in Cosmo, mostly though ....she decided she hated her shoes.

Being pretty didn't make being poor any more fashionable.

She was freezing her ass off and the pawn wasn't opening  for alomost an hour. So far, she judged the morning as about par for the course.

First, an old guy in a pick-up truck nearly wiped her out.  It was close. Close enough to see veins in his old face. Close enough for her to see a row of leathery knuckles death gripping the wheel, big and bulging as quail eggs.  She'd avoided it all,  that is, whatever would happened  in a head-on crash, by one dreamy inch.

In her rear view, she watched the bastard roll dowon his window give her the finger. 

Now, she was stuck at a pawn shop. Her nose was already red and raw from wiping it on her sweater.

Nine-something A.M. She thought about going back home. But that was just a waste of time.

* 

The day before, she'd called up and asked what to do about selling a gun.

They said: She could bring it down, they could look at it. They said because it was just a shotgun, the paperwork's a breeze.

She  wanted to know something else.

"I don't mean to take up your time, I'm really sorry if I am, but how much do you think you'll give me for it?"

"Ahh...I couldn't say. Not over the phone."

Men never come out and really say anything, do they? 

"I mean, you know, like what's the typical price?”

"Here's the thing,  but if it's what you say it is, who knows what something like that might be worth? To the right guy”.

"I just want to sell it tomorrow.  A thousand maybe."

"Honey, you sound like a sweet kid, so I'm just gonna tell you something. Ahh..eh-hmm.excuse me.  With something like you've got, alot  depends on how much it was used, how is it worn and, mostly,  how bad you want to get rid of it."

She wanted to get rid of it as like malaria, and one thing was for sure, it had been used at least one time too many. 

“Miss, ahh..hehm.  Miss, in-my-personal-experience, I'm gonna tell ya something here, just because something's old, don't necessarily mean it's valuable.”

He said she needed her to understand that. She did, and she didn't.

Things were absolutely crazy around Jonas & Sons. He explained it to her. “Miss, well, let me tell you something,  the best time to be here is in the a m, later it gets, busier it gets. Everybody needs money this time of year.”

He guessed she knew all about that.

*

There was a red steel flag inside her meter. It was Saturday, so that much didn't matter. An Ithaca shotgun was wrapped in a blanket and locked in her trunk.  A pump.

A 'pump' is what her mom's brother called it.

“There's  no sound in the world like the sound of a pump shotgun, especially... at night.” 

All she knew about guns was wrapped in her trunk. It was her's now and that was enough to know.

Last week, he was over for dinner.  Her mom cleared the dishes. Her brother was at the table holding the Ithaca, inspecting it.

"That digger right there," pointing out a dark pit in the stock, "was from opening day, maybe five, six years ago. That....was hilarious."

He stripped the tab on a new beer. He tipped it back half-grinning and half swallowing.

"Ellie Purdy said she forgot, " he made parenthesis in the air, "her electric fence was still on. Hell, we'd all just had coffee up at the house! She knew where we were goin'. Anyway, Mac's stepping over it, tippy-toeing, and WHAM!, right between the legs. Sucker went ten foot in the air."

He laughed, but it was from at distance. Her mom got up to visit a the bottle she kept above the refrigerator.  When her back was turned she did something with her mouth. A small funny sound came out, but no one saw what she did with her face.

Little sister was there, using a spoon on ice cream meltings she'd cornered in her bowl. She didn't do anything with her face.

*

Her legs were 'Free-zing!'. She pulled her best heavy sweater down over her skirt. The bottom part of it was probably ruined. But if anyone knew how cold it was, they couldn't blame her.

In the air,  she saw her breath without trying.

She had nothing but time to kill. But everybody knows a car with a wiry hole where the tape player used to be, is a lousy place to do it. Her fingers were cold; she rolled them up in the cuffs of her sweater and jammed into her arm pits.

She walked around and tried to take her mind off of things.

A dry cleaners pumped gray steam out into the alley.

There was a military looking store fronted with wavy aluminum. A skinny man with long hair and a wad of keys arrived there around nine, but nothing seemed to happen after he went inside.

*

Copy Country Too, a hair joint called the Purple Palace that lived up to it's name, a taxidermist,Walt's Tools Etc.; and a place that Cashes Checks - she didn't know why people didn't just go to the bank,  and a place advertising that “We Have EVERYTHING!.

When a small rain came, she danced between the window awnings heading back to her car. She made it on the streets fifteen-minutes. Thirty to go.

Millions of watery specks floated down, riding a breeze so softly, she imagined it was snow on her face.  She discovered it was a good day to stare at the sun.  Nothing but a gray ball of yarn. 

Then, right there across the street, she saw the lighted half of a red and green neon sign sticking out of the bricks.  It said The Elbow Room was OPEN.

Maybe this wasn't the right way to put it , but she never knew that places like that were open  so early. 

  ***

Continued.......