What Seemed Like Silence
a new short story by Matthew O’Brien
What Seemed Like Silence
The city of Las Vegas and Clark County should ban the homeless from sleeping outside. As this would help preserve and even boost Southern Nevada’s tourist economy.
Michael Walsh was marking yet another sentence fragment with his red pen when he felt the booth shake slightly. Body odor assailed his nostrils. He looked up from the essay, discovering a heavyset woman with a pointed nose and coffee-colored facial skin that was freckled or flecked with dirt sitting across from him. Salt-and-pepper hair curled from under her Army-green knit cap and came to rest on her shoulders, which were covered with a soiled, off-white sweatshirt. She had bags beneath her eyes and was smiling toothlessly.
“Hi,” said Michael, pen still touching paper. He sat up and set down the pen. “How you doing?”
“Not bad,” the woman responded in a raspy drawl. “You?”
He paused, then shrugged. “I’m grading papers in McDonald’s on a Saturday night in Vegas. I could be doing better.”
“You could be doing worse, too,” said the woman.
“I guess you’re right,” he said. He reached over a bulging, frayed manila folder tabbed “ENG 102,” which sat between a dollar-menu sweet tea and an empty, caramel-stained sundae container. “I’m Mike.”
“Call me Jeanie.” The woman’s hand, a shade darker than her face and featuring red nails that were chipped and faded, met Mike’s halfway across the table. Her grip was gentle, but dry and calloused, and she didn’t look him in the eyes; she surveyed the restaurant, as if expecting someone or something.
“Can I get you a drink or a bite to eat?” he asked her.
“I’m fine,” she said, continuing to look around. “Thank you.”
Before Mike had time to fully consider the woman’s presence, a man entered the restaurant through the front door and came into view, at a distance, over her shoulder. He had braids and was wearing a dark-blue bandana, a jean jacket and matching pants, and Chucks. He looked toward the booth and flashed gang signs. He then Crip-walked (touched toe to toe and heel to heel, forming an alternating V shape) past the soda fountain, en route to the cash registers, while continuing to stare at the booth.
Is he looking at me? Mike glanced over his shoulder; no one was behind him. Why’s he looking at me?
“You all right?” the woman asked Mike. “You look like you seen a ghost.”
Mike tried to focus on the woman, but the man in blue bypassed the lines at the registers and pulled up at a partition that separated the ordering area from the dining room. He leaned over the waist-high divider and glared at the booth.
Having lived in Las Vegas for fifteen years and worked as a journalist, Mike’s bullshit detector was finely tuned. He had encountered or interviewed a parade of hustlers, hype men, wannabes, narcissists, attention addicts, and false idols (and had exposed them in person or in print, when appropriate). One of the main seductions of the city as a tourist destination and a place to live is that you can be someone you weren’t in California, Texas, Iowa, or Georgia. You can mutate overnight.
But as he stole glances at the man, Mike’s bullshit detector didn’t even twitch. This was not, he sensed, some Snoop Dogg impersonator taking a break from posing for photos with tourists on the Strip and staying in character. The guy was legit.
“Do you know him?” Mike asked the woman.
She turned toward the man, bowed her head slightly, and squinted. “Nope,” she said. “Never seen him before.”
“Neither have I,” said Mike.
“He seems to know you.”
“I’m pretty sure I’d remember him if I’d met him.”
The man stood up straight and again flashed gang signs. He then crossed his arms and continued his death stare. “Fuckin’ pig!” he finally muttered.
Mike set his elbows on the table. “What’d he say?”
“He thinks you’re a cop.”
Mike turned to the man and held up the essay. “I’m a teacher. I’m grading papers,” he explained to him.
Again, the man called him a pig.
Mike showed the woman the essay, then asked her, “How many cops can identify a sentence fragment?”
Mike scanned the restaurant for a security guard. He craned his neck and tried to locate a manager behind the counter. The employees were taking or preparing orders, and the customers were in line, backs to the dining area, or sitting and socializing with companions or biting into their burgers; they hadn’t noticed the man—or were acting as if they hadn’t.
McDonald’s has gone downhill, thought Mike in frustration. When he was growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta, the restaurant was a place for kids to gather after a soccer game and for families to eat lunch before catching a matinée. Now it’s a glorified soup kitchen and mess hall, he asserted. Now, in its sleek and grease-soaked confines, an adjunct professor can’t even order a couple of items off the dollar menu and grade papers in peace.
Another reason the city and county should ban the homeless from sleeping outside is that most of them are mentally ill and a danger to themselves and others.
“It might have something to do with your shirt,” noted the woman, looking down at it.
“It’s a UNLV T-shirt,” said Mike incredulously. “That’s where I teach.”
“It’s red.”
“You can’t wear red in public in Las Vegas?” Mike exhaled and shook his head in disbelief.
“Let him stare,” the woman said. “People stare at me all the time.”
Mike looked at the man, then back at the woman.
“You scared?” she asked him. “What are you scared for?”
“I’m not scared,” he said. “I’m confused.”
Following thirty seconds of silence, Mike capped the red pen and forced it into the front pocket of his gray cargo pants. He slipped the ungraded essay into the manila folder, then stuffed the folder into his workbag. Sliding his hand into the pouch of the bag, among pocketed pens, pencils, paperclips, bookmarks, and chewing gum, he felt the rough, plastic cover of his monthly planner and the smooth steel of his Smith & Wesson 9mm handgun. He thumbed off the safety. Finally, he slid out of the booth, stood, and shouldered the bag.
“Nice talking to you,” he said to the woman. “Have a good night.” He collected the tea cup and sundae container and started for the door.
“You gonna let him chase you off like that?” she said.
Mike dropped the cup and container into a trashcan, then exited the restaurant.
Halfway down the walkway, he glanced over his shoulder. The woman was still sitting at the booth and talking, while peering out at him through a large, plate-glass window. The man was pushing his way through the door.
The walkway led to Paradise Road, where cars blurred by, music blaring from their opened windows. Partially obscured by the monorail line, the Strip danced across the western horizon. Mike had walked to the restaurant from his studio apartment near Paradise and Desert Inn Road. If he turned right on the main sidewalk, he could be home in less than five minutes. But instead of striding toward the sidewalk, he measured his steps.
There were things that Mike could have never known or imagined about the man in blue. And there were things that the man could have never known or imagined about Mike: In the past year and a half alone, he’d been laid off, his wife had filed for divorce and started a new relationship, he’d seen his young son sporadically, he had trouble finding work, and he didn’t have anyone to confide in. (An abyss, which he couldn’t explain, had formed between him and most of his friends and family members.) He’d handled the flurry of misfortunes about as well as he could have. He tried to understand the other side’s perspective, not take it personally, find a positive in the situation. He wasn’t defiant or combative. Essentially, in each instance, he’d nodded and walked away.
But on this Saturday night in front of McDonald’s his feet felt heavy. They could carry him no farther than the end of the walkway. It might as well have been the edge of a thousand-foot cliff.
The man also could never have known or imagined that, when Mike moved from a two-bedroom apartment in northwest Vegas that was a half-mile from where his ex-wife and kid lived and into the studio to save money and be closer to UNLV, he bought a gun. He was living on the periphery of a neighborhood that had a bad reputation and he didn’t want to be caught defenseless at home or on the streets. Additionally, the gun was his way out if things continued to fall apart.
Before he’d exited the studio, Mike had to make two key decisions: where to grade papers and whether to pack the pistol. His default choice for grading was Chinatown—one of the few quiet, accessible, and affordable places open after nine p.m. in a city alleged to be twenty-four hours—but he wanted to stay closer to home. He also craved fresh air, so he chose to walk to the McDonald’s north of Twain Avenue. This informed his second decision. Though it could be loud and somewhat unpredictable, he’d not found Paradise Road dangerous. He’d also never encountered a problem while grading at any of the all-night McDonald’s surrounding the Strip. But, he noted, fast-food restaurants were susceptible to mass shootings, and there had been a rash of them throughout the country. With that in mind, he slid a black lockbox out from under his bed, lined up the combination, and opened the box. He popped a loaded magazine into place, then flipped on the safety. Finally, he placed the pistol into the pouch of his workbag.
Nearing the end of the walkway, the man in blue close behind him, Mike veered left onto the gravel between the sidewalk and McDonald’s, so the restaurant would not serve as a backstop. The man continued to trail him. Mike slipped his hand into the pouch of the workbag and simultaneously whipped out the gun and spun around. The man seemed neither prepared nor surprised; he thrust his hand into his waistband and pulled out a Glock 19. Several rounds rang out. Spent shell casings clanked against the rocks like coins in a slot tray. Still looped over Mike’s shoulder, the bag lay flat on the ground.
A final reason the city and county should ban the homeless from sleeping outside is that they like living on the streets, and this assertive approach would force them to make a change.
A cackling sound broke five seconds of what seemed like silence. When the shooting started, the restaurant’s employees and customers dove for cover or disappeared through the side door. The only person visible in the front window was the woman. She was still sitting at the booth, peering out of the window. She was rocking back and forth and laughing loudly.
Matthew O’Brien is a writer, editor, and teacher who lived in Las Vegas for twenty years and is currently based in San Salvador, El Salvador. His latest book, Dark Days, Bright Nights: Surviving the Las Vegas Storm Drains, shares the harrowing tales of people who lived in Vegas’ underground flood channels and made it out and turned around their lives. You can learn more about Matt and his work at www.beneaththeneon.com
