‘Try it out,’ said Benny. He unfolded a sheet and flung it across the melted surfboard and then indicated with his open-palmed hand that the older man should ‘try it out’.
‘Give me your jacket.’
Sarkis was trying to make peace with Benny Catchprice, whose eyes were now bright and whose lower lip had seemed to grow swollen in anticipation. He gave up his jacket. Benny checked the label before he hung it, not on the new wooden hanger, but on a thin wire one. He suspended it from a water pipe above their heads where it partly blocked out the light.
Sarkis sat on the surfboard. It made no sense to him. It had a profile like an ‘n’ but flatter and it was not of even width.
‘Wrong way,’ said Benny. ‘Face down.’
Sarkis hesitated.
‘Come on, what’s going to happen to you?’
Sarkis lay face down on the sheet. To get half comfortable you had to have your head down and your arse in the air.
‘More up,’ said Benny.
Sarkis squirmed upwards. The sheet was rumpled beneath him. He felt Benny adjusting something around his legs and then he felt a snap, and a pain. His legs were held, strapped by metal. His skin was pinched.
‘Hey,’ he said.
Benny got a strap to his right arm before Sarkis realized what was happening. He kept his left hand free but it did him no good. He was pinioned. Benny was giggling. He smelt of peppermint.
‘Let me go,’ said Sarkis Alaverdian. ‘My pants are getting crushed.’
But Benny had him by the left hand, trying to pinion that one too. And all the time – this giggling, this weird luminous excitement on his face.
Benny was smooth and white, a stranger to the sports field and the gym, but he had two arms and he used them to slowly press Sarkis’s stronger arm flat against the rubbery-looking epoxy. He snapped the clip around it with his teeth and chin.
He knelt for a moment, and brought his face close to Sarkis. ‘Don’t think you can walk out on me,’ he said. His expression had changed completely. No smile – just small pink hot spots on his cheeks. His breath was cold and antiseptic.
Sarkis felt a prickle of fear run down his spine. ‘O.K.,’ he said. ‘Very funny.’
Benny stood. ‘Funny?’ he said. ‘You just stole my first sale. You cost me three thousand fucking dollars. Then you think you can walk away from me.’
Sarkis acted as normal as he could be with his backside in the air and his head full of blood. He tried to look his captor in the eye, but could not twist his neck enough. ‘You admitted yourself, Benny,’ (he was talking to the buckle of his belt) ‘it was your fault too.’
‘You don’t get it, do you? Why did I say it was my fault? How could it have been my fault? Why do you think I’d say it was?’
‘You were going to do this to me?’
‘Sure.’
‘You made this thing? What’s it really for?’
‘For this,’ said Benny.
‘O.K.’ It hurt to twist his neck up, it hurt to leave his head down. ‘Now let me go.’
‘Let me go, let me go,’ Benny mocked. He took a step away to a place where Sarkis could not even see his shoes. He was somewhere behind him, near his back. ‘You don’t know what you’re asking – I gave you a family position. Do you appreciate that? I gave you my brother’s position. You are some slime off the street. You are no one. I offer you a ground-floor position. You could make two hundred thou a
‘Hey relax.’
‘Oh no, you relax, mate. You relax a lot. You should have listened to my aunt,’ Benny said. ‘This is a serious business you have got yourself involved with.’
‘What do you want me to do? Stay or go?’
Sarkis twisted his head sideways and this time, found him – the little spider was arranging a sheet of orange plastic on the sofa.
‘Stay or go?’ Benny laughed through his nose. ‘You’re going to have to be more clever than that.’ He was fussing with the sheet of plastic – wiping it with a rag, smoothing it with his hand – so he could sit down without dirtying his suit. When he sat he made a crumpling noise.
‘Stay or go,’ he said. He arranged himself with his legs crossed and his manicured hands folded in his lap. He smiled at Sarkis just as he had smiled at Gino Massaro.
40
Vish knocked on the cellar door, not once, but many times. When he opened the door, still uninvited, Benny was sitting on the rumpled orange sheet on the couch and staring at him. He was the only neat thing in the middle of this stinking mess and he had laid himself out, so to speak, with his hands folded on his lap, as pale and perfect as a wax effigy.
He had changed the lighting since last night. He had altered the direction of those little reading lights which had originally been above the beds in the family home. He had rigged them up so they shone on the webs of handwriting on the distempered wall, on the green concrete ceiling, on anything but where you’d want a light to be. The room was criss-crossed with the shadows of electric wires.
Vish stepped forward on to an empty ice-cream container. He stumbled and put his hand down to stop him falling.
He put his hand on to a living thing. His heart whammed in his chest.
‘Shit,’ he said.
It was a human being, he saw that. He got such a fright he could hardly breathe. He had his hand on a man’s buttocks.
The man was lying on his stomach and had to crane his neck so he could grimace up at the yellow-robed figure to whom he looked like a gypsy at a country show. He had a little wisp of beard under his lip and trousers made from some velvety material. He showed a lot of teeth, like someone about to be cut in half on stage.
‘You left it too late,’ Benny said. ‘I found another brother.’
Vish held his kurta close to his chest and peered down at the poor fellow who had been pinioned in position like a butterfly. The man stretched up his head again and rolled his eyes at Vish. He had white dry stuff in a rim around the edges of his lips. Vish observed this and accepted it like he might have accepted the presence of a goat or a policeman.
‘Anything you want to say to me,’ Benny said, ‘you can say to Sam. He’s my brother.’
‘Help me,’ Sarkis said.
‘He’s only joking. No one needs you.’
‘Please,’ said Sarkis. ‘My legs are hurting.’
‘Is this what you call being an angel?’ Vish said.
‘Do I look like an angel?’ Benny sneered. ‘You think I’d live down here if I was a fucking angel? No, I’m not an angel – I’m an
Vish smiled and smoothed the air as if he was patting the roof of a sand castle. ‘Even if they do say that …’
‘No, you said that – your guru doesn’t want you to have
‘Who is this bloke?’
‘This is Sam. He’s my brother. He’s going to make two hundred grand a year. He’s going to do an F&I course next week …’
