“Smells good,” Butch said as he inhaled fumes of burning flesh.
“You live here long?” I asked.
“’Bout six months. But I’ll be gone two weeks after the first.”
“Eviction day?”
Butch grinned and cocked his head.
“Say,” I said. “Tell me, did Roman Gasteau live here?”
“Still do. Or maybe so. I ain’t seen’im in a few days.”
“You know’im?”
“To say hi. Hey, hey, why’ont you flip it ovah, you know I likes my meat bloody.”
“Uh-huh. You got some garlic powder?”
“Naw, man.”
I followed the crippled man’s gaze over to the kitchen shelf. There I saw a crumpled-up handkerchief, a can of Barbasol shaving cream, an uncovered jar of Skippy peanut butter, and a loaf of Wonder Bread.
“I used to run with Roman a while back,” I said. “He give some bad parties.”
“Yeah?” Butch wondered. “He ain’t never asked me. But he live down in one-B if you wanna run down there an’ see ’im.”
“Uh-huh. But if he ain’t there you think anybody ’round here might know how I could get in touch wit’ him? You know I could use a party after pullin’ all’a this meat around after me.”
“Ridley an’ them know’im.”
“He live here?”
“Up in three-A.”
I could tell by the way Butch was looking at me that he was suspicious of my questions. But the main thing on his mind was steak.
I put the pan of fried and bloody meat down in front of him. It smelled good.
I was impressed at the way Butch made Mr. Hong’s tender aged steak seem tough. He chewed and chewed, frowned and grimaced.
“Hey, brother,” he said through a mouthful of meat. “This shit here ain’t prime.”
He wanted to play, and so I gave him a show. I banged on his tile counter and swore at him and all his relations. After I got through yelling I stormed out of his apartment leaving the partially eaten steak in his frying pan.
He’d earned the tip.
RIDLEY MCCOY was a nondescript man. His hair was wavy and his eyes tended toward brown. He had a small nose and dark skin. His pants could have fit with a sports jacket but he could have also worn them to work; they went perfectly with his thin-strapped undershirt. Ridley wouldn’t look me in the eye but I knew that he was interested in cheap steak.
“Where you get’em?” he asked my chin.
“From a guy I know.”
“Could you get some more?” Here he hadn’t even tasted one steak and he already wanted a dozen.
“Maybe I could. Why? You wanna be a regular customer?”
Ridley looked from side to side and then said, “Why’ont you come on in outta earshot.”
His furniture, I was sure, was stolen from a motel. The console TV still had the markings from where a coin box had been attached. There was a small Formica-topped table that stood on a single chrome stalk in the corner. The battered Venetian blinds were levered shut and there was only one lamp, leaving the room uncomfortably dark.
One half-open door led from the room. Maybe that was a bedroom, or maybe he slept on the couch.
“How many steaks could you get?” he asked in a whispery little voice. It was the kind of voice that got you mad because you had to strain to hear it.
“I cain’t hear you, man,” I said loudly. “Somebody ’sleep in there?”
Ridley looked at the door and then back at my chin.
“Girlfriend,” he said.
“Well, maybe I better come back later.”
“Naw, man. That’s okay. She could wake up,” he said. Then he shouted, “Penny! Penny, come in here!”
I heard a rustling and then a thump; a few seconds passed and then came a groan. Soon after that the door opened. A young brown woman wearing only a man’s dress shirt came into the room. When she saw that Ridley wasn’t alone she brought two fingers to the base of her throat—I guess that was all the modesty she had left.
“Wha?”
“This is Brad, Penny. He got some steaks he wanna sell.”
“So? I was ’sleep.”
Ridley went to his roommate and gave her a big unfriendly hug. The tussle pulled the shirt far up enough for me
