Chapter 8

EMPTY BUD CANS already littered the outdoor stairwell. The Gambler and Bobby and the other crew bosses asked us not to litter, but there was no way to get a bunch of exhausted bookmen, thrilled after a long day to be sitting and drinking beer, to pick up after themselves. The bosses didn’t really care as long as the books were sold, and Sameen and Lajwati Lal, who owned the motel, were content if not exactly happy as long as the bills were paid. We stayed at this motel every time we came to Jacksonville, and they weren’t about to mess with a decent-size account, so in the end nothing got done.

I rounded the stairs, nearly slipping in a puddle of spilled beer but recovering by leaping into the air and landing at the bottom of the first floor.

To get to the pool I had to cross a little courtyard, go past the reception lobby, and come out the other end. I never got that far. When I landed I smelled something sweet and familiar, and it wasn’t until I felt a hand on my shoulder that I processed the scent.

It was pot. Not that I found anything especially sinister about pot. Sure, I associated its use with my father, but my father also wore pants, and I wasn’t about to eschew them on similar grounds. I’d smoked a few times, and though it always made me headachy and paranoid, I figured that sometimes you had to be a good sport and go along to get along. But here, on the road, with the bookmen, I associated pot with just one thing: rednecks.

“Where’s the Hebrew fire?” Scott lisped in his high-pitched voice. It wasn’t bad enough the guy had an impediment, he sounded as if he’d just sucked in helium as well. He had one of his dinner-plate hands on my shoulder, and there was nothing friendly about it. He pressed hard, but even so I could have gotten away if that’s what I’d wanted; however, doing so would have involved some squirming, which struck me as humiliating. Better, I thought, to act as though I didn’t care. This strategy was one I’d turned to again and again in middle school and high school. It never worked, but I clung to the routine as desperately as a sailor clung to prayer in the face of a storm.

“Yeah, where ith it?” Ronny Neil said. Harassing me didn’t mean that Scott was above contempt.

I looked at Scott’s hand. “I’ve got somewhere to go,” I said. The sour odor of his unwashed body began to pierce the shell of the pot.

“Where would you have to go?” Scott asked. His eyes were already red and half-closed, and he teetered a little uncomfortably on his feet. I tried not to stare at a cluster of pimples on his chin, big and foamy white at the top.

“Yeah,” Ronny Neil repeated, tossing his hair back like an actor in a shampoo commercial. He took a big suck from the pipe, held it for a moment, and blew the smoke in my face.

I understood the gravity of smoke blowing. A man blew smoke in your face, you beat the shit out of him if you had the chance. It was a hanging offense, a reason to go nuclear.

“Bobby wants to see me,” I said in a scratchy voice. It seemed like a good lie. No one wanted to get on Bobby’s bad side. There was no percentage in that.

“Fuck Bobby and fuck you and fuck all your asshole friends,” Ronny Neil said.

“That,” I observed, “is a lot of fucking.”

“You little shit,” Scott added. He jabbed his finger in my stomach. Not insanely hard, but hard enough to hurt.

Ronny Neil smacked Scott in the back of the head. “I tell you to hit him, you fat fuck?”

“I just poked him,” Scott answered defiantly.

“Well, don’t juth pokth himth. Don’t juth poke nobody until I tell you to, asshole.” He turned to me. “You think Bobby is so great? He ain’t shit around here, and he don’t know shit about what’s going on. The Gambler trusts us. You understand? Not you and not Bobby. So stop hiding behind him like he was your mama.”

“Bobby’s a fucking asshole,” Scott said. “He gives all the best areas to a pussy like you.”

“A puthy like you,” Ronny Neil repeated.

“You know what, I’m starting to feel like a third wheel in this conversation,” I said. “I think the polite thing would be for me to excuse myself.”

“I think the polite thing would be for you to stick it up your ass.”

“It’s funny,” I said, “how the standards of politeness vary from culture to culture.”

“You think you’re smart. You blank again tonight?” Ronny Neil handed the pipe over to Scott, who looked at his hand for a moment, trying to figure out how to keep me where he wanted without touching me. Scott then studied the ground and moved around on unsteady feet to block me from getting away.

“I didn’t blank,” I said. “Not that it’s your business.”

“When you fall asleep tonight,” Scott said, “we’re gonna fuck you up.”

I had heard this threat before, but it never amounted to anything. They didn’t want to get fired, they just wanted to make me afraid. And it worked, because even though they hadn’t done anything yet didn’t mean they weren’t going to. They were certainly capable of it. Guys like Ronny Neil and Scott had no real future, not one they could imagine or look forward to. The end of high school had always meant that I could put the worst behind me; for Ronny Neil and Scott, it meant that the best was over. They were entirely capable of doing something horrible and irreversible, of sending themselves to jail, all on a whim.

My clenched determination not to waver before them was beginning to crumble. I’d seen too much today, and now I could feel the tears welling back somewhere in my throat. I needed to find some way to end this.

“Just what do you boys think you’re doing?”

We all turned around. Sameen Lal came storming out of the registration office, a paddle I somehow recognized as a cricket bat in one hand. He was in his forties, slender and tall, and had a thick head of black hair, well-defined cheekbones, and small, intense eyes, a natty little mustache. We stayed in his motel many times, and he recognized some of us and had opinions about the ones he recognized. He and his wife had singled me out for friendly waves, a “Good morning,” a sympathetic nod at night. They somehow knew my name. They also appeared to understand that Ronny Neil and Scott were bad news.

“I smell something illegal,” Sameen said. “I want you boys to clear out of here.”

“How you doing, there, Semen? I smelled it, too,” Ronny Neil said. “I think Lem here’s been smoking ganja. Best you should call the police and turn him in.”

Hardly my idea of a good joke, tonight less so than ever. Fortunately, Sameen understood what he was dealing with.

“I find your story very unlikely. Now, this is my motel, and I’m telling you to clear off, or I’ll report this to your boss.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. I’d hate to see this here motel of yours burn to the ground, if you take my meaning.”

“His meaning is arson,” I said, working hard to sound dry now that my rescuer was here.

“I never threatened nothing,” Ronny Neil said. “You just remember that when this here place burns down that I never threatened nothing.”

“I do not want to hear your threats,” Sameen said. “You are a pair of very bad boys. Now, clear off, I said.”

“Okay, then.” Ronny Neil took hold of my arm and began to lead me away. “Let’s go.”

Sameen raised the cricket bat. Only a few inches, but it was clear he meant business and that he understood a lot more than his retiring demeanor suggested. “Let go of him, and clear off by yourselves.”

“I don’t like the way you’re ordering us around, Semen,” Ronny Neil said. “You don’t decide who goes where, now, do you?”

The two of them stared at each other, each waiting for something definitive to happen. Over by the pool, above the throb of conversation and music, I heard a few words, unmistakably Chitra’s voice, and I wanted to find some way to excuse myself. For her sake, yes, but for my own, too. I didn’t want to be there to witness more violence, not even if it meant Ronny Neil having his head bashed in by a vigilante wicket keeper.