Huge (10 page)

You had to have guns if you wanted to go to war
. So when my alarm clock woke me up the next morning, I made sure I wasn’t suffering any lingering damage from yesterday (which I wasn’t) and then jumped out of bed for my daily regimen of push-ups and sit-ups. I did fifty of each every morning, alternating every other day between push-ups and pull-ups, the latter of which I did in the doorway to my room on an extension bar that I kept in the closet. I used nothing but my own body weight for resistance, because that’s what Herschel Walker had done on the farm in Georgia when he was young, and it’d made him into the star running back for the New Jersey Generals. Okay, this wasn’t exactly a farm, and I’d never been as far south as Delaware, let alone Georgia. But if you didn’t switch exercises like that, you’d develop unevenly, and that just looked stupid, no matter where you lived.

When I was done, I saw a note on my desk paper-clipped to an envelope. It was from mom. It said that grandma had come up short again and told me to take the money in the envelope over to the retirement home this morning, first thing.

That figured. No matter how far the buck got passed, it always landed on me. Every two weeks grandma had to write a check for $275 to pay for the luxury and splendor of confinement in the retirement home. But along with a good portion of her memory and her grip on reality, she’d somehow lost the ability to distinguish between 20 and 70 and had been handing over checks for $225 instead of $275 at least once a month. Or maybe she was just screwing it up on purpose: I wouldn’t put it past her. Whatever. Pencil-necked Bryan did the books at the home, because he’d probably gotten a mail-order degree in penny-pinching or something, the twerp, so he’d gone to talk to her about it the first time it’d happened. I wished I’d been there, because grandma’d had one of her moments, not remembering or denying everything, but then Bryan showed her the check, and she accused him of altering it after cashing it and trying to swindle a defenseless old woman. She must have totally reamed him, because he was still shaken up when he’d talked to mom and told her what the problem was. Anyway, that’s what mom had told me, and that’s why he called us every time it’d happened since, so he didn’t have to deal with grandma anymore—because he couldn’t—but so he could still extort the difference from mom anyway. Fucking weasel.

Well, at least I’d get to check out what Kathy wasn’t wearing and give my client an update on the case. I went into the bathroom, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and gelled up my hair. I wore it spiky on top and clipped on the sides and back, except for the rattail in the center of my neckline, about four inches long, braided and fastened with a rubber band. Neecey usually braided it for me, but every time she did, she told me it looked like trash, same as mom, and they were always squawking about how I should cut it off. Either that, or they teased me that I was the mailman’s son, because my hair was dirty blond and not dark like theirs.

When I came out of the bathroom, Neecey’s bedroom door was closed, so I knocked to see if she was there. No answer. I knocked again. More of the same. She must’ve spent the night at Cynthia’s. I
still had questions for her, especially about Razor, but I was starting to wonder if she’d ever be here long enough for me to ask them. Shit, she’d been absent from the premises so often this summer you’d think she was the landlord instead of a tenant.

I went into my room, pulled out a pair of knock-off Jams with orange and yellow flowers that mom had bought on sale at the Bradlees in Hazlet and a yellow T-shirt with
HULKAMANIA
across the front in bold red letters. I turned the T-shirt inside out before I put it on, though, because professional wrestling was so fucking fake that it made me sick to watch it. But the T-shirt matched my shorts, and that’s why I was wearing it. I skipped the socks, slipped on my white canvas sneakers, and checked myself in the mirror on the closet door. My clothes were cheaper than a toothless prostitute’s, but the bright colors brought out the tan I’d gotten at the beach on Sunday, and the tan brought out my eyes. They weren’t dark brown like mom’s and Neecey’s, but gray-blue—translucent, icy—and my face wasn’t rounded and soft like theirs either, but lean, even, and slanted slightly down in V’s from my eyebrows to my chin. Even my ears and smile were kind of V-shaped, so much so that while Marlowe had been my favorite from page one, I’d always thought I looked more like a young Sam Spade: I was a blond Satan just like he was. The only real difference was that I was a tanned, gutter-mouthed, bike-riding beach rat of a dirty-blond Satan who roamed and patrolled the pocket-lint streets of a shit town close to the Shore, instead of someplace cool like San Francisco. And every once in a while it made me think I must’ve been adopted.

The bus they
used for day trips was parked in front of the home when I pulled up. You could tell it was an old school bus because all they’d done was slap some green paint on it and write
OAKSHADE RETIREMENT HOME
in white lettering on the sides. Other than that, it was the same kind that used to shuttle me to school every
damn day, until I’d started taking the Cruiser instead. Then again, the retirement home itself used to be the town’s elementary school way back when, and it still looked every bit of it. It was one of those sprawling, one-story, U-shaped brick jobs, with tall glass windows, a long concrete overhang leading to the front entrance, and a large parking lot in front. When the town coughed up the dough for a new school, the old one was bought up by investors who must’ve figured that since the building already had offices and a cafeteria, all they’d have to do was divide the classrooms into bedrooms, add a tiny bathroom to each, hang some Sheetrock around so it didn’t look exactly like a detention center, pack it to the rafters with the weak and weary, and keep the linoleum floors in the hallways for that institutional touch. I didn’t know how much they’d forked over for the property itself, but I was positive that they hadn’t spared a penny on the renovations. Nah, they’d spent all three.

As I got closer, I saw about twenty of the inmates lined up alongside the bus on the front walk: old men in golf shorts, leather sandals, and dark socks over lumpy, blue-veined calves, elderly women in plaid elastic-waist pants or shapeless dresses, pale white skin glowing in the cloud-laden light, everyone in jarring colors and wraparound sunglasses, some wearing heavy sweaters although it was already eighty degrees, plastic tote bags and fanny packs, umbrellas and fishing hats, handheld radios with earpieces, walkers, canes, each one of them complaining about something different, but all of them jockeying for position, trying to get on board. Irma was standing at the front of the bus, wearing a green blazer and a white blouse, smiling her chubby, patient smile, clipboard in hand, nodding her head, writing down names as the old-timers climbed onto the coach, assuring them that there was plenty of room, reminding others to use the can first, asking some if they’d remembered their pills, and generally working the crowd, telling them how much fun they were going to have, like they were kids.

I saw grandma’s head in one of the bus windows, barely high
enough to notice, all giggles and anticipation, like a kindergartener on her first trip to the petting zoo. She waved at me and blew a kiss and I waved back, but I didn’t go over. I couldn’t. The whole scene was so goddamn depressing that it practically gave off a smell. There they were, all worked up, raring to go, like flea markets and outdoor auctions, slot machines and casino buffets, horse races and early-bird specials were worth looking forward to, when everybody knew they were just ways of wasting time and money until it was all over. It made you wonder what was the point of living a life if that’s what it came down to in the end. Then again, it wasn’t like the alternative to living was a hell of a lot better.

I chained the Cruiser to the
NO PARKING
sign out front, went inside, shook the goose bumps from the A/C off my arms, and saw Bryan behind the front desk. Damn, his ears were big. I took the envelope out of my backpack and slapped it down on the desktop. As usual, he didn’t look up.

“Where are they off to?” I asked.

“Hey, squirt,” he said, because he had a really endearing way with people. “They’re going to the auction in Collingwood. They’ll be back this afternoon. Is this the money you owe me?”

He was wearing a pink short-sleeved collar shirt with one of those gay little alligators on it, like four gold chains of varying length and thickness, white wristbands on both forearms, and diamond studs in his ears. You could tell he had no idea what he was supposed to be—guido, preppy, or andro—so he just threw together whatever he had in his closet to see what came out. The result was total lameness.

“The name’s Huge.”

“As if.”

What a douche. “Where’s Kathy?”

“She starts at nine.” He looked at the wall clock. “In like two minutes. So don’t cream yourself, okay?”

This guy was really asking for it. He opened the envelope, removed two twenties and a ten, and held each of them up to the
light, like he was checking to see if they were counterfeit. Then he looked toward me, somewhere slightly above my head, and said, “Well? Shouldn’t you be out terrorizing the neighborhood? No, wait, wait, don’t you have
two dollars
to collect?”

He turned his back and snorted, apparently cracking himself up. I’d seen
Better Off Dead
, too, and while the movie was funny, his reference to it wasn’t. But it gave me an idea.

“No, I’m waiting,” I said, and after a long, casual pause I added, “for my receipt.”

Bryan stopped and turned around. “Receipt?”

“Yeah, you know,” I said, “a little piece of paper that proves we gave you money?”

“I know what one is, runt,” he said, staring down at my neck, “but what do you need that for?”

Runt? He was about five inches taller than I was and he was like thirty. But I let it slide. “Just what I said,” I said. “We pay you in cash, so how do I know you’re not putting that money in your own pocket?”

“Who are you, the junior division of the IRS?” He snorted again, because he seemed to think he was hilarious. “Look, I’m doing you guys a favor by calling you in the first place. You know why? Because failure to make biweekly payment in full without prior approval through submission of a waiver form”—he shook a piece of paper at me—“is grounds for contract review and possibly dismissal from residency in the Oakshade Retirement Home. Check the fine print, Mighty Mouse.”

He made a wheezing sound when he laughed, like a whoopie cushion with a leak.

“Wanna guess how many of these your grandmother’s filled out? Right, zero. And instead of making a major production out of it and forcing her to do paperwork, I just get the money from your mother and put it toward her bill. I’m taking care of you guys, so don’t give me any more static.”

Like that noodle could force grandma to do anything.

“I won’t,” I said, “as long as you give me a receipt.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” he heaved, fixing his eyes on what I guessed was my ear. “If I give you a receipt, I have to enter the fact that I gave you a receipt in this book here, and if I enter it in this book here, then I have to record it in that book over there, the red one, see? Then, all of a sudden, there’s a record that your grandmother’s checks come up fifty dollars short from time to time, because an additional cash payment will be logged in the ledger, and if that happens, then the head accountant will ask me about it during our quarterly review, because that guy is suspicious as hell and doesn’t miss anything.” He was breathing so hard I thought he might faint. “And you know what that means, Einstein? That means he may decide to pull your grandmother’s contract for review, because the very first thing he’s gonna think is that she can’t afford to live here, because that’s what he’s
paid
to think. And believe me, you don’t want that guy on your case.”

“No,” I said, “I don’t. I want a receipt.”

Bryan’s face turned a delicate shade of pink, like his shirt. The symmetry was lovely to behold.

“Are you dense or something?” His voice was shaking. “This is a business, Tiny Tim, not a charity, and the owner, Mr. Silver, is a real bastard when it comes to money. Receipts that point to a history of short payments are exactly the kind of excuse he’s always looking for to kick someone out and charge the next person in line that much more. So I
can’t
give you a receipt, get it? In fact, you should be
thanking
me for taking care of your grandmother and saving you guys a lot of hassle. So do
me
a favor for once. Just take your dolly, get on your Big Wheel, and pedal off. Quit busting my chops.”

“All right, you can’t give me a receipt. Fine, I get it,” I said. “Just mail it to us, then.”

“Mail it?!” He
curled his skinny fingers into fists.

Up to that point, I’d never realized how high-strung Bryan was.
It almost made my plan too easy—to pester him with a phony request, keep peppering him with jabs, pushing his buttons, just long enough for Kathy to arrive and catch him in the act of yelling at me. Then she’d let him have it, or at least see for herself what kind of prick he could be. Grandma would’ve been proud of me, and it’d keep Bryan out of Kathy’s pants, at least for a few more days.

But when Kathy walked in—all lickable legs, swishy hips, and bubbly, bouncing boobs—she was intercepted near the door by Cuthbert Stansted, dressed neat and tidy as ever in his three-piece suit, who had his arm around poor old Livia. Cuthbert was a good twenty years older, but they were both short and small and bowed and hoary as all hell with age, and the way they were clinging to each other made it look like if one moved away too quickly, the other would collapse. Not that there was any danger of either one moving too quickly, but still. They said something to Kathy, she gestured
just a second
to them with her hand, and then she walked over to the front desk.

I realized Bryan had still been talking at me when the buzzing in my ear finally went quiet, but he never had anything important to say, so it didn’t matter that I’d missed it. As soon as Kathy got to the desk, he switched off of me completely, like I’d vanished.