PRECIPITATION LIKELY, CHANCE OF SUN (“THE MIGHT AND THE WILL”), A NOVELLA
The weather in Quinn’s life is about to change again; maybe this time he can stay out of prison.
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THE QWICKY PAWN KING WAS LONNIE MOPES, A ONE-ARMED VETERAN GENERALLY KNOWN AS MR. ITCH OR KING ITCH OR SIMPLY ITCH, ALL NOMINALLY FOR THE THING HE COULD NO LONGER SCRATCH, BUT THE MONIKER COULD JUST AS EASILY HAVE REPRESENTED HIS PROFESSIONAL DEVOTION TO IMPULSE.
Quinn Merriwether sells camera equipment in a shopping mall photography store. Not a great job, but better than what he could expect after spending eighteen months in The Alley for felony larceny. To be clear, Quinn had not stolen anything but a bottle of bourbon. He had never known about the bag full of cash; no one had. And as for the rest of it – the diamond ring and the gun – that had been Roddy P’s idea of a going-away party; a way to get rid of Quinn and curry favor with King Itch all in one fell swoop.
It might have all turned out differently had the perky meteorologist on the local news known the difference between sun and sleet. But she hadn’t, and everything for Quinn had careened suddenly sideways, dumping him into a prison cell; the same prison his father, Clement, had once patrolled when Quinn was just a kid, back when his mom and sister were still alive. He and Clement had been spared the car accident, but it had changed everything anyway, tilting Quinn’s life like a greased slide stretching from his relatively normal adolescence, through a couple of dead-end jobs and right into an orange jumpsuit.
So. Eighteen months to think about things. Eighteen months of listening to the weather girl, as Quinn has come to think of her, chirping down at him from a television screen bolted to the corner of the prison common area, secretly judging him for trusting her. Eighteen months to hate her for not knowing the difference between sun and sleet.
Funny then, after his release, as Quinn is testing the camera equipment he has been miraculously entrusted to sell, watching the mall shoppers through the lens, when who but the weather girl strolls obliviously into the viewfinder.
She doesn’t sense the change coming. Neither of them does. Weather is like that.
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