Onepennyprofiles’s Weblog

       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. 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.

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