ဆုထက် - လမ်းပေါ်ကရှေ့နေ

လမ်းပေါ်က ရှေ့နေ “ဒီနေ့ နေ့လယ်စာ ခင်ဗျား ဘာနဲ့စားခဲ့သလဲ” မစ္စတာက အတန်ကြာအောင် တိတ်ဆိတ်နေမှုကို ဖြိုခွဲလိုက်ရင်း မေးလိုက်၏။

“ကြက်သားနဲ့ အရွက်သုတ် စားခဲ့တယ်” ဟု အံ့အားသင့် သွားသော ကျွန်တော်က ပြောပြလိုက်သည်။

“တစ်ယောက်ထဲလား” “မဟုတ်ဘူး၊ မိတ်ဆွေတစ်ယောက်နဲ့ ဆုံပြီး စားခဲ့တာပါ”

“အဲဒီအတွက် ဘယ်လောက် ကျသင့်ခဲ့သလဲ၊ ခင်ဗျားတို့ နှစ်ယောက်စာအတွက်ပေါ့”

“ဒေါ်လာ သုံးဆယ်ပါ”

မစ္စတာသည် ထိုအချက်ကို သဘောမကျချေ။ “နှစ်ယောက် စာအတွက် ဒေါ်လာ သုံးဆယ်တဲ့” သူက ထပ်၍ ပြောလိုက် ၏။ “ကျွန်တော် နေ့လယ်စာကို ဘာနဲ့ စားခဲ့တယ်ဆိုတာ ခင်ဗျား | သိရဲ့လား” ““မသိပါဘူး”

“ကျွန်တော် စွပ်ပြုတ်နဲ့စားခဲ့တယ်၊ ဒုက္ခသည်တွေ ခိုလှုံရာ ရိပ်သာက အလကားပေးတဲ့ စွပ်ပြုတ်ပေါ့၊ နောက်ပြီး စွပ်ပြုတ် | သောက်ရတာကို ကျွန်တော် ဝမ်းသာလှပြီ၊ ဒေါ်လာ သုံးဆယ်နဲ့

ကျွန်တော့်ရဲ့ မိတ်ဆွေ တစ်ရာလောက်ကို ကျွေးမွေးနိုင်တယ်၊ ဒါကို ခင်ဗျား သိရဲ့လား”//

ချမ်းသာနေသော ရှေ့နေတစ်ယောက်ဖြစ်သည့် မိုက်ကယ် | ဘရော့ခ်သည် အကြောင်းတစ်ခုကြောင့်သာ မစ္စတာ ပြောနေသည်ကို နားထောင်နေခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။ အကြောင်းကလည်း တစ်ခုတည်းပင်။ မစ္စဘာတွင် သေနတ်တစ်လက် ရှိနေပေသည်။ ။

သို့သော် နောက်တစ်နေ့တွင် မစ္စတာ ပြောခဲ့သော စကား များကို သူ စဉ်းစားကြည့်မိသည်။ တစ်လျှောက်လုံး ပထမဆုံးအချိန် အဖြစ် သူသည် နေစရာအိမ်မရှိ၊ စားစရာအလုံအလောက်မရှိကြသော ဆင်းရဲသူများအကြောင်း တွေးလိုက်မိသည်။

ထို့နောက်တွင် ထိုသို့တွေးတောစဉ်းစားလိုက်မိခြင်းက သူ၏ | ဘဝအား ပြောင်းလဲသွားစေပေသည်။//

Chapter 1

Mister

The old black man got into the elevator behind me. He smelled of smoke and cheap wine and life on the streets without soap. His beard and hair were half-gray and very dirty. He was wearing sunglasses, and a long dirty coat hung down to his knees.

He looked fat, probably because he had all his clothes on. In the winter in Washington the street people wear all their clothes all the time. They can't leave any of their clothes at home, because they don't have a home.

The old man didn't belong here. Everything here was expensive. The 400 lawyers in the building, who all worked for Drake & Sweeney,//

were paid an unbelievable amount of money. I knew that because I was a Drake & Sweeney lawyer myself.

The elevator stopped at six. The man hadn't pushed an elevator button. When I stepped out and turned right, he followed me. I pushed the heavy, wooden door of a big meeting room. There were eight lawyers at the table inside and they all looked surprised. They were looking behind me, so I turned. My friend from the elevator was standing there. He was pointing a gun at me.

"Put that gun down," said one of the lawyers at the table. His name was Rafter. He was a hard man in courtroom, maybe the hardest lawyer that Drake & Sweeney had.

Suddenly, a shot hit the ceiling. Rafter's eyes opened wide and his mouth shut.

"Lock the door," the man said to me. I locked the door of the meeting room.

"Stand against the wall." We all stood against the wall.

The man took off his dirty coat and put it carefully on the large, expensive table in the center of the room. He had five or six red sticks around his waist, tied there with string. I had never seen dynamite before, but they looked like dynamite to me.//

I wanted to run and hope for a bad shot when he fired at me. But my legs were like water. Some of the lawyers were shaking with fear and making noises like scared animals.

"Please be quite," said the man, calmly. Then he took a long yellow rope and a knife from the pocket of his pants. "You," he said to me. "Tie them up."

Rafter stepped forward. "Listen, friend," he said, "what do you want?"

The second shot went into the wall, behind Rafter's ear.

"Do not call me 'friend," said the man.

“What would you like us to call you?" I asked him, quietly.

"Call me 'Mister.""

I tied the eight lawyers with the yellow rope. One of them, Barry Nuzzo, was my friend. We were the same age, thirty-two, and we had started at Drake & Sweeney on the same day. Only our marriages were different. His was successful and mine wasn't. He had three kids. Claire and I didn't have any. I looked at Barry and he looked at me. I knew we were both thinking about Barry's kids//

We could hear police cars outside and noises as the police entered the building. Mister pointed at the dynamite around his waist.

"I pull this,” he said, "and we die."

For a second we all looked at each other, nine white boys and "Mister."

I thought of all those terrible shootings you read about in the newspapers. A crazy worker returns to work after lunch with a gun and kills everybody in his office. There had been kilings at fast-food restaurants and playgrounds, too. And those dead people were children or honest workers. Who would care about us? We were lawyers.

Time passed

"What did you eat for lunch today?" Mister asked me. breaking a long silence.

He spoke clearly and, from the sound of his voice, he had had a good education. He hadn't always been on the streets.

"I had chicken and salad," I said, surprised. "Alone? "No. I met a friend." “How much did it cost, for both of you?" "Thirty dollars."