Sway (14 page)

“So, you'll find a girl with low self-esteem and a sweet disposition,” I said. “Worse things happen at sea, gimp.”

“Ask her for her number,” he said as the waitress was walking back to our table.

“You ask her,” I shot back.

He just shook his head and looked out the window again as she came to take my credit card. When she brought the slip for me to sign, she hung at the end of the table awkwardly while I wrote in a 25 percent tip.

As she took the credit card slip, she thanked me and leaned a hip against the edge of the table. “I was, uh … Well, I was wondering if you're into music at all,” she said to me as her hand returned to nervously stroke the wayward lock of hair. “On Wednesdays, there's an open mic night at the Hut, over on University.”

“You play an instrument?” I asked her.

“Sort of,” she said with a self-conscious laugh. “I play guitar but mostly I'm a singer. Do you play an instrument?”

“No,” I said with a glance at Pete, who was muttering to himself as he stared out the window at the passing traffic. “But I am into music.”

“Cool. Maybe I'll see you there sometime,” she said as she took two steps backwards then turned to walk away.

“I told you,” Pete said in a smarmy voice once she had gone. “She didn't even notice I was here.”

“She was probably just being polite—ignoring the fact that you're a lunatic, over there muttering to yourself.”

“You going to ask her out?”

“Doubt it,” I said. “If she goes to open mic night at the Hut, she can't possibly have very good taste in music.”

“I guess if you have girls throwing themselves at you all the time, you can just pick and choose the ones you'll grace with your presence.”

“I think you're too hung up on the idea that people don't like you because you're funny-looking,” I said pensively. “You should consider that it has more to do with your shitty personality.”

“You're hilarious.”

“I've got to split,” I said as I checked my watch and stood.

“I'm going with you,” Pete said as he reached for his bag.

“Not today, gimp. I can't take you where I'm going.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because Skinhead Rob is bad news. Anything can happen when you're dealing with an individual as crazy as he is.”

“You actually know someone whose name is Skinhead Rob?”

“He doesn't call himself Skinhead Rob,” I said. “He's a skinhead whose name happens to be Rob.”

“Why are you friends with a guy who's a skinhead?” Pete asked, his voice rising in the way it did when he was frustrated with me.

“I don't send him a Christmas card every year, Pete. I just buy things from him.”

“But still,” he said, frowning, “aren't you Jewish? Don't skinheads hate Jews?”

“Sure, they hate just about everybody who isn't a WASP—they even hate gays, and cripples like yourself.” I acknowledged the middle finger he shot me with a small nod. “But he knows it would be impossible to get ahead if he dealt strictly with Aryans. Skinhead Rob may be crazy but he's a practical businessman.”

“If he's so dangerous, why do you go there by yourself? Why aren't you worried that something might happen to you?” Pete asked.

“I don't trust him, because I'm not stupid, but I sure as hell don't want to have you with me if the cops decide today is the day to take him down, or if Rob suddenly goes postal. Your sister would kill me.”

He shot me an ugly look but didn't pursue the argument any further.

“We'll hang out tonight,” I said as I walked away. “I'll pick you up.”

As I drove away from the diner, I felt my shoulders getting tight. Dealing with Rob was always unpleasant. I just hoped Grim wouldn't be there. Just the thought of seeing Grim made my testicles shrink into my abdomen.

 

TWENTY

Skinhead Rob lived with his mother, a petite woman with wiry, washed-out blond hair, who had been broken by life. Rob was the product of her first marriage with a guy who had been in and out of prison since Rob came out of the womb. His younger sister was the spawn of a different man and was only about fourteen. Her brother treated her like crap but was strangely protective when it came to guys showing any interest in her. Not that many guys would. She was small for her age and had a boyish figure, her skin pale, a network of blue veins showing in her forehead.

I went to the back door, which opened into Rob's basement room, dark and dank and smelling like musty laundry. Black light posters adorned the walls, and a large swastika flag hung suspended from the ceiling over the bed. There were several bookshelves filled with books, meant to demonstrate Rob's ideologies more than actual evidence he could read—
Mein Kampf, Eugenics, The Fountainhead,
and, oddly, the Narnia Chronicles.

“Hey, Rob,” I said with a curt nod as I held back a hand to keep the storm door from slamming behind me.

“You're late,” he said without taking his eyes from the forty-two-inch television that stood on a stack of plastic milk crates at the end of his bed. I knew without looking that he was watching a Mel Gibson film—Skinhead Rob's personal hero because Mel was an anti-Semite and a Holocaust denier. It seemed to me that wearing a mullet like Mel's was more of a crime than eating latkes, but I carefully guarded my opinions around Rob.

Though he called me out for being tardy, I wasn't convinced time had any real meaning for Rob. He didn't leave his basement lair very often. At least not during daylight hours. His skin was as pale as winter sunshine, his eyes such a dark blue, they looked almost black, like a shark's, devoid of all emotion. The strip of hair down the center of his head was wispy and too black for the color to be natural.

I didn't apologize for my lateness. Deferring to Rob would be a sign of weakness, and he preyed on the weak. I changed the subject to business, the only language Rob and I had in common.

“I'll take fifty hits of X off your hands if you've got it,” I said.

“Where's that girl of yours? I like it when you send Joey to see me,” he said as he reached for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

“I don't know. I don't see the girl socially,” I lied.

“Yeah,” he said with a nod. “She's the frigid type. Makes up half of her appeal.”

I shrugged, feigning indifference, knowing I would never again send Joey to this place to run an errand for me.

“Hey, there's a concert I want to see—next Thursday night—but it's sold out. You think you could get tickets for me?” he asked as he stood and went to the large safe that stood in the laundry area and began working the combination.

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “What's the show?”

“Voivod.”

I nodded. “No problem. I'll make a few calls.”

“You know,” he said as he dug around inside the safe and counted pills into a bag, “you're all right. Grim's always saying I shouldn't trust you, you know, shouldn't trust a Jew, but you're not bad.”

“Yeah, well, you know, I'm only half Jewish,” I said.

“Oh, yeah?” Rob asked, oblivious of my cheekiness. “I guess that's not so bad, then. Not like you're black or a queer or something.”

Jesus wept.

Suddenly the room felt small, like the walls were closing in, and I craved fresh air and sunshine on my face. I dug in my pocket for a wad of cash, wanting to speed things along and get out, the menace of this place palpable.

Just then, there was a creaking noise as the basement door opened and a pair of legs appeared on the basement steps. I quickly slipped the money back in my pocket and casually leaned back on the heel of my hand as if I were just hanging out.

Rob's sister appeared carrying a basket of laundry. Clad only in shorts and a skimpy tank top, the outfit on her scrawny frame was indecent. I directed my eyes at the floor, as if just by looking at her, I was somehow in violation. She watched me, her expression blank and stupid.

“Hey,” I said with a nod, resting my gaze anywhere but directly on her.

“What the fuck?” Rob swore as he slammed the door of the safe.

I jerked at the sound of his voice but his anger barely registered with his sister. She was still watching me, like a rabbit hoping if it didn't make any sudden moves, it wouldn't end up as someone's dinner.

“I told you to knock, you dumb-ass!” Rob shouted.

She kept her gaze fixed on me, as if asking me to step in and say something to calm Rob. For a long minute I was rapt, seeing her entire pathetic existence through the windows to her soul. Like an animal raised in a cage, she had never known anything different, yet there was a longing for salvation all the same. Then the shutters came down again and her expression took on the bovine acceptance of a life that offered only the promise of pain.

Rob knocked the laundry basket roughly from her hands and gave her a shove. She cried out, more from fear than from pain, and lurched halfway back up the stairs before turning on him and screaming, “I'm going to tell Mom!”

“Go ahead!” Rob shot back. “And then I'll black both your damn eyes, you worthless little shit.”

She was crying as she slammed the basement door, Rob growling and muttering to himself as he went back to the safe. In a moment he returned with a wrinkled brown paper bag and tossed it into my lap.

My feet itched to be moving as I waited for him to count the wad of cash and I didn't take the time, as I usually would, to verify he had given me the correct number of hits.

As I emerged from Rob's lair, I took a deep breath, had not realized until that moment that I had been taking only small sips of the toxic air in Rob's basement. I walked to my car knowing it was the last time I would visit this place.

 

TWENTY-ONE

That night Dad had a gig, so I had the house to myself. My phone had been buzzing with texts since early in the evening but I ignored them. They could wait. There was an incoming call as I stood at the sink combing my hair after a shower. Pete. I answered.

There was a brief pause after I answered, then Pete's voice, low, almost a whisper. “Jesse?”

“Yes.”

“You told me we were going to hang out tonight,” Pete said, sounding pissed.

“We are. I just finished getting ready,” I said as I smoothed my hair forward with the palm of my hand and took one last look in the mirror. “I'll come pick you up.”

“It's nine o'clock!” he cried.

“So?” I asked.

“My parents aren't going to let me leave at nine o'clock at night. Where would I tell them I'm going?”

“Shit, I don't know, Pete,” I said. “They're your parents. Tell them whatever you want, or don't tell them anything. Whatever.”

“You mean sneak out?” he asked, his voice rising in alarm.

“Or just walk out. Jesus, relax. I'll be there in ten,” I said, and cut the connection before he could start whining about something else.

When I pulled up in front of his house, Pete was sitting at the curb, concealed by a parked car. “Where are we going?” he asked as he fastened his seat belt.

“To a party.”

“What kind of a party? Will there be alcohol there?” he asked, grilling me, which was just his way.

I frowned. “What other kind of party is there?”

“Why are we going so late?”

“This isn't late, Pete. Ten o'clock is early unless you're four or forty,” I said as I turned the volume back up to listening level.

“What the hell are you listening to?” he asked.

“Faust,”
I said. “An opera by Gounod.”

“You listen to opera?”

“Doesn't everybody?” He couldn't tell if I was being ironical so just shut his mouth for the ten-minute ride to the party, which was some kind of personal record for him.

I didn't need the GPS to tell me we had arrived at the house, since there were a half dozen guys staggering around the front lawn shouting and carrying on as two of their buddies wrestled on the ground engaged in some kind of pseudo-homosexual mating ritual.

A small crowd of girls in too-short skirts huddled around the front stoop, oblivious of the fact that the guys were too preoccupied with touching each other to notice them. The house was thumping with bass from music that was unidentifiable from where we sat.

“Man, I've got to stop showing my face at high school parties,” I said with a weary sigh. “This is a shitshow.”

“Is a shitshow good or bad?” Pete asked.

“Nothing is either good or bad,” I said absentmindedly, “only thinking makes it so.”

“What's that? Like poetry or something?” Pete asked.

“You talk a lot,” I said, but he ignored my observation, his usual MO.

“Looks like we're the last ones to get here,” he said as he waited for me to open my door first. I didn't, just sat back in my seat while I surveyed the scene on the lawn.

“It doesn't matter,” I said. “The party doesn't start until I get here.”

“Oh, yeah?” he asked smartly. “You're just so god-damn popular, they couldn't possibly have a party without you there?”

“I bring all the party favors,” I said. “They're all waiting for their hits of X, their dime bags.”

“What do you—? You mean you're a drug dealer?” he asked, his voice rising to a squeak. “Are you serious?”

“What did you think I was doing at Digger's?” I asked. “Buying a quarter pound of pot to smoke myself?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I didn't think you were a dealer. Oh man, you're going to get my ass arrested.”

“I'm feeling a lot of judgment coming from a kid who drools and has a bum leg,” I said.

“Fuck you,” he said, his voice dropping back down a couple of octaves, his hand unconsciously straying to his lower lip to test it for wetness.