Each time he picked someone up- at the designated convenience store- Bobby would take the guy around to the back of the car and open the trunk to shield their conversation from the rest of the crew. Once they entered the car, you couldn’t ask if they’d scored or blanked. You couldn’t ask how they did. You weren’t allowed to tell stories about anything that happened to you that day unless the story was in no way related to scoring or blanking. Bobby and the other bosses knew there was no way to keep people from talking about it. If someone hit a triple or a grand slam- sometimes even a double- everyone in all the crews would know by the next morning, but you couldn’t say anything in the car.
These rules appeared not to apply to Ronny Neil, who didn’t know how to shut up, about scoring or anything else. Ronny Neil was a year older than me and he’d gone to a high school across the county from mine, so I hadn’t known him, but the rumor machine had churned out some interesting details. By all accounts, he’d been a serviceable placekicker for the school’s football team, but he’d been convinced of his greatness and convinced that a football scholarship would be his for the taking. As it turned out, the only offer he received was from a historically black college in South Carolina that was interested in diversifying its student population. Ronny Neil had gone off in a huff and come back at the end of his freshman year with his scholarship revoked. Here details get fuzzy. He was kicked out either because he failed to keep his grades up, because he’d been involved in a drunken and sordid sex scandal that the university wanted desperately to keep quiet, or- and this was my personal favorite- he’d never quite gotten the hang of avoiding the word jigaboo, even when black students outnumbered him three hundred to one.
On the drives back to the motel, he’d tell us about how he’d scored, and he’d share with us some of the more implausible incidents from his colorful life. He’d tell us about how he’d filled in briefly for the bass player of Molly Hatchet, how he’d been asked to join the navy SEALs, how he’d finger-fucked Adrienne Barbeau after his cousin’s wedding- though it was never clear what a movie star was doing at his cousin’s wedding. He told these stories with such surety that they left me wondering if my own sense of the universe was hopelessly skewed. Was it possible that I lived in a world in which Adrienne Barbeau might let herself be finger-fucked by a moron like Ronny Neil Cramer? It hardly seemed likely, but how could I really know?
On the other hand, he bragged about things that were true, too. Like about how the last time we were in Jacksonville, when we’d stayed at the same motel, he’d stolen a passkey off the cleaning cart and slipped into half a dozen rooms, lifting cameras and watches and cash out of wallets. He’d laughed himself sick watching Sameen, the Indian man who owned the place, defending his wife- the hotel maid- from accusations of theft. He told us that the previous year, before the election, he’d put on a suit and tie and gone around soliciting donations for the Republican Party. He’d have people make out checks to “RNC,” and then he’d just write in the rest of his last name. Seedy check-cashing places on Federal Highway had no problem cashing his checks for R. N. Cramer.
Tonight he was going on about how some hot redhead had been begging for him while her husband watched, helpless to do anything about it.
“You sure it wasn’t the husband wanted you?” Scott asked, the words coming out as a high-pitched jumble of spit from his rather serious lisp.
“Yes, I’m thur,” Ronny Neil said. He flicked Scott in the ear. “You smell worse than a piece of shit, you tongue-tied dumb-ass.”
For someone who’d just been insulted, injured, and mocked for a speech impediment, Scott took it all in stride. I felt a sympathetic knot of outrage on behalf of a guy I couldn’t stand.
“How would you know what a piece of shit smells like,” he asked sagely, “unless you were going up to them and sniffing at them?”
“I know what a piece of shit thellths like, you fucking pussy, because I’m thitting next to one.” Still, Ronny Neil looked away, embarrassed that Scott had drawn blood with so cutting a zinger.
When we got back to the motel, we walked through its forlorn main parking lot, cradled between two parts of the two-storied L-shape. Here were the cars of the lost, the wandering, the short on gas, the long on fatigue, people who had left their dreams up north or out west and were now willing to let their lives take meaning from nothing more complicated than the absence of snow. In the light of day, the buildings were pale green and bright turquoise, a Florida symphony of color. At night it appeared desolately gray.
We filed into the Gambler’s room. His real name was Kenny Rogers, so the nickname had come with depressing inevitability, but we treated it as though it were the height of wit. As I understood it, the Gambler didn’t own the company that contracted with Champion Encyclopedias’ publisher, but he was high up. The chain of command was lost in interlinking strands of haziness, and I suspected intentionally so, but I knew one thing with absolute certainty: Every set of books that got sold meant money in the Gambler’s pocket.
He was probably in his fifties, though he looked younger. His slightly long white hair gave him an angelic cast, and he had one of those easy-grinning faces that made him a natural at sales. He looked you right in the eye when he spoke to you, as if you were the only person in the world. He smiled at everyone with fond familiarity, the lines around his eyes crinkling with good humor. “A born fucking salesman,” Bobby had called him. He still rang doorbells two or three days a week, to stay fresh, and rumor had it that he hadn’t blanked in more than five years.
When I walked in, the Gambler hadn’t yet arrived. He was always the last to show, strutting into the room like a rock star coming out onstage. Ronny Neil and Scott were off in the corner, talking loudly about Ronny Neil’s truck back home and how big the tires were, about how a cop had stopped him for speeding but let him go because he admired the tires.
The Gambler’s Gainesville crew finally came in, strolling with the confident sense of superiority of a king’s retinue. The Gambler drove a van, so he had a large crew- nine in all- but only one woman. Encyclopedia sales held particular challenges for women, and even the good ones generally didn’t last for more than two or three weeks. Rare was the crew with more than a single woman. Long hours spent walking by deserted roadsides, going alone into strangers’ homes, lecherous customers, and lewd insinuations from the other bookmen dwindled their ranks, and I suspected, with great sadness, that this one wouldn’t last, either. Nevertheless, I’d been thinking about her since her appearance the previous weekend.
Chitra. Chitra Radhakrishnan. During the past week, I’d caught myself saying her name aloud, just for the pleasure of hearing its music. Her name sounded kind of like her accent. Soft, lilting, lyrical. And she was beautiful. Stunning. Far better looking than any woman I thought myself entitled to like, even from a distance. Tall and graceful, with caramel skin and black hair pulled into a ponytail and big eyes the color of coffee with skim milk. Her fingers were long and tapered, finished off with bright red polish, and she wore tons of silver rings, even on her thumb, which I’d never seen anyone else do.
I hardly knew her, I’d had only a single extended conversation with her, but those words had been electric. For all that, I couldn’t say why this woman should be the one to send me into a tumbling vortex of infatuation. There were other women in the group, though not many, and there had been, in a purely objective sense, far prettier ones in the past. I’d never had a crush on any of them.