The Junk Drawer Needles

Part 3

Brimm sat in his recliner, rocking. The salesman, Steven James, was perched across from him on the mattress’s edge, several bibles stacked between them and the salesman was pointing at them, explaining. The salesman’s black briefcase lay propped up against the door. 

       “This cover is made of a simple, synthetic plastic–it’s just made to look like the real thing, but this one, this one here? This one is made of real Moroccoan leather and it gets better with age, but it will cost ya’ a tidy bundle.”

       “Uh-huh,” Brimm muttered and lit a Player’s Light, studying the salesman. His face was smooth, almost youngish, with a light stubble sandpapering his face, while the light in the salesman’s dark beady eyes stared just up and over Brimm’s shoulder–never directly at him. Brimm watched the man smiling and warbling on about psalms and prayers and the Lord and all the while staring just up over Brimm’s shoulder.

       “Of course,” the salesman pitched, “these ones here are only samples and it will take a few weeks to get’em to you, if you order them that is.” He grabbed a Bible with a Morrocooan cover and opened it to show Brimm the stylized New Times Roman typeface, which he explained, was unique to this series and by all accounts had been well received by the millions of people who have filled out the subscription, which he was presently sliding in front of Brimm. 

       Brimm took the sheet and thought of killing the man. It was a cold blooded thought that slithered in, hissing. I could do it, he reasoned pretending to analyze the form. I could go into the kitchen and grab a knife–just have to tell him I’m making coffee or something. Brimm looked up from the form and watched the salesman’s mouth form words, but they were soundless and unconnected to anything, they drifted towards him in a liquid form and his ears, ill equipped, could not discern a word of it. Besides what difference would it make? I’d be doing that sorry sack of shit a favor. And anyways, he took my story. 

       “So…do you?” the salesman asked smiling, his eyes gazing over and beyond Brimm’s right shoulder. 

        ”Do I what, exactly?” Brimm replied shaking his head.

        ”Hey, come on now,” the salesman asked his eyes darting around the room. “Are you fooling with me? Do you have one here already?” 

        ”Have what?”

         “A Bible.”

        ”No, no I don’t.”

         “Oh, Come on now. There has got to be one here somewhere,” the salesman said and leaned across the mattress to look in the milk carton night table. 

         “I don’t have one,” Brimm said spreading his hands, smiling. I mean, if a guy is wandering the streets at night, he must be alone, no family to miss him. No baboom-boom buddy….

         “I see-ee,” the salesman said curling his lip into the corner of his mouth and exposing a cracked front tooth. It seemed to Brimm to be an uneven thing for a Bible salesman. Probably got it trying to sell this crap. 

         The salesman got up from the mattress and stomped over towards the desk. One of the bibles tipped over and tumbled to the ground. Brimm looked at it and then back to his notebook and recalled the notebook tumbling out of the bookrack back at The Write Tools Stationary Shop. 

          ”I think I need a drink,” Brimm said getting up from his chair. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

          ”Why that’d be great, sir.”

           “Indeed it would,” Brimm said and headed into the kitchen, the salesman droning on behind him about shepherds and their flock. Brimm set about making the coffee mechanically heating the water, opening the cupboard, pulling out a jar of Maxwell House, scooping two lumps of instant into two cups and pouring the hot water glug, glug, glug into the cups which he put on a tray with two slices of bread and the Hienz 57. Next to these he put a large boning knife.

        They sipped coffee together, the salesman seated back on the mattress and Brimm in the recliner. The bread and Heinz 57 stayed on the tray. So did the knife. During the slurping silence Brimm’s eyes kept darting back and forth between the man and the knife, the man and the knife. After a couple of minutes the salesman thanked Brimm for the coffee and walked over to the desk where he picked up Brimm’s notebook, turned it over, and asked Brimm if he wanted to buy the bibles. 

         “I don’t think so,” Brimm replied and picked up the knife. He sliced the bread in two. “Break bread with me?” he asked.

         “No thanks.”

        ”Are you sure?”

        ”Yes, sir. And the bibles?

        ”No thanks. Bread?”

        ”But it can help you with your–”

        ”Its not going to help me with any goddamned problems,” Brimm growled.

        ”But, sir, all problems are God delivered. And we all have our problems,” he said looking around the room and frowning at the filth and squalor. “I mean, look: you are alone on Christmas Day in this dingy apartment–”

        ”So are you, Stephen, so are you.”

       The salesman looked around and shifted from side to side then squared hmself and looked back at Brimm. “Haven’t you heard of Deuteronomy–” 

        ”Fuck Deuteronomy.”

        The boning knife became real then and he fought it back. “Look, you’re wasting your time on me,” Brimm said getting out of his chair and facing the salesman. “I think you should leave now.” 

         “Excuse me, sir?”

         “Leave now,” he said pointing at the door with the boning knife. 

         “But this is the Word of God,” the salesman said his voice high and cracked and his eyebrows low. He picked up a Bible and walked across the room towards the desk. “God speaks to you through this book,” he said leaning on the desk. “

        ”Get. Get out now” he said slowly. 

        The two men stared at each other. The salesman broke the deadlock and Brimm followed the salesman’s eyes as they snuck over to the door with the briefcase leaning on it. The room’s air was stale and sweating and it felt hard for Brimm to breathe. 

         The salesman fidgeted then stood up straight, his chin leaning forward. “You know,” he asked bouncing the notebook in his hand, “that I can’t do that.”

         Brimm stared.

         “I can’t do that, sir. Those who are lost are never a waste of one’s time; but rather the ones who waste it.” He reached out to Brimm, his hand hovering just over the knife. “Let me help you, sire. Let God help you.” 

          Brimm crushed his cigarette on the floor. His teeth bit into each other. “Why were you walking outside last night?”

         “Sorry, sir?” The salesman said looking around the room.  

          ”I asked: why were you walking around the street, spying on me.”

          ”I’m sorry sir. I think you must have the wrong person. I wasn’t spyi–”

          ”I saw you.”

          ”N-no, sir, you’re mistaken. I was at church.” Again the salesman looked at the briefcase leaning onto the door and then back at Thomas Brimm with the knife waving lazily below his bloodshot eyes. Suddenly, Brimm charged at the man toppling the bibles stacked in the middle of the floor, but the salesman was quicker and darted over to the door where he kicked aside the briefcase and grabbed the door handle. He turned back to face Brimm. “Sir, I….”

         “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t!”

         “Sir, I think–”

         Brimm charged again but the salesman scrambled out of the apartment slamming the door behind him. A second later, Brimm yanked the door open and threw the knife down the stairwell where it crashed against the wall and barely missed the salesman as he took the stairs three at a time, practically breaking his neck as he left.

         Brimm returned to his room full of bibles. It was three hours before he noticed that the notebook was missing.