“That part, right there, that’s the part I’m talking about. Do you hear it?” He jotted something onto a coffee-stained legal pad. A cigarette burned in an ashtray on top of the same yellow page.
“Yes, I hear it.” Her voice was quiet and I couldn’t tell if she had an accent or not.
“That’s what I’m trying to do. That’s what the whole shot is about. It’s all there in that one riff.”
“You’ve done it.” She spoke soft and kind.
“Now what? . . . Now what, baby?” He said this as if he really wanted an answer from her, but this was definitely not the case.
“That’s always the question, isn’t it?” She did have an accent. Maybe Spanish or Portuguese.
He chuckled with a childlike pitch that surprised me. It took some of the edge off his menacing aura. Then, as his laughter subsided, he turned his head in my direction. “Hello.” He said it flatly but his eyes had the intensity of a brain surgeon staring down the tumor in a young boy’s head. “What are you, like fourteen? Jesus Christ! Tell Fernando he can’t send kids to my place! What, is he trying to get me fucking arrested?!”
He scared me. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about or who Fernando was. I wanted to tell him that I lived downstairs but I thought that would confuse him even more so I just held up the bags of food.
“I have your delivery.” When I spoke, the woman
turned her head. She was exotic-looking with high cheekbones and dark eyes. Mexican or Indian or maybe from Spain. She glanced at me and then quickly looked down.
“What?!” He shouted it like he was expecting some kind violence to happen.
“He’s from the diner, Lou,” she said.
“Oh . . . oh yeah.” He relaxed a little. “Where’s the old man? Did you mug him or something?”
“No, ummm. I just started working there a few weeks ago . . . and I . . .”
“I’m kidding, man.” He chuckled again. “What’s the matter? Can’t you take a joke? How much I owe you?”
“Seven fifty-five.”
The moaning feedback echoed from the speakers. He stood up and started searching his pockets. I smelled the kerosene on him again. She looked back up at me. Her eyes were gentle but I was uncomfortable. I felt like she was waiting for me to do something or for something to happen. I didn’t know what that was, but I had a strong feeling that I had forgotten to do it or didn’t know how. I became very confused and disoriented.
Whatever specific energetic vibration they gave off as individuals was new to me—that I understood. But as a couple the voltage was magnified and amplified: a white-hot current looping between transponder towers. My heart began to race, I was nauseous and sweating. Maybe it wasn’t them, maybe it was the recording that upset my equilibrium. Everything became alien and dangerous. My knees started shaking. I wanted to run but my legs felt stiff and heavy.
I made a big effort to focus on the reason I was there: the transaction of food for money. He was rifling through his pockets with a jittery manic urgency, like there were a hundred pockets in his pants and one of them held a ticking bomb. My mouth went dry and my tongue was swollen; I didn’t think I was going to make it.
After searching each pocket at least ten times, he gave up and turned to the woman. “Where’s my money, honey?”
“Check your shoe, Lou.”
Lou.
Lou laughed, then looked at me: “Hop on the bus, Gus.” He turned off the music.
I regained my faculties, my heart slowed down, I stopped sweating, the nausea went away. The woman smiled sweetly at me. Lou’s eyes softened and he went on reciting rhymes.
“Just drop off the key, Lee. And put your hand on my knee.” He walked to a corner of the room and reached into an ankle-high black leather boot with a high heel. From its depths he recovered a neatly folded banknote and handed it to me. It was a hundred-dollar bill. “Here you go, sport.”
“I’m sorry, sir . . . but I don’t have enough change for that.”
“Well go get it.”
“Okay, I’ll be right back.” I handed over his order and turned to leave.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
I turned back around to face him. “I’m going to get some change for you.”
He snatched the hundred out of my hand and gave me back the food. His eyes got big, hard, and piercing again. His head twitched like a rooster’s. “The fuck you think, I’m stupid? You think I’d actually fall for that shit? I invented that fucking scam back in Brooklyn, you little prick! Get the fuck out of my house!!”
His arms were moving fast and randomly, waving in my face as he spoke. It looked like he had four of them from my perspective. I was frightened more for him than for me and I was pretty scared. He seemed like he was about to croak from a heart attack, stroke, or conniption fit. I apologized but my words had no effect.
“Maybe you and the old man are in cahoots and this whole thing is a setup. Send him over and I’ll stab the fucker with a bread knife!!”
“It’s not a setup, I promise.” I didn’t recognize my own voice as it came out of my mouth. “I’ll go to the diner and get your change, sir. You hold onto your money. I’m very, very sorry.” I started out the door but a claw gripped my shoulder hard.
“No, no, no . . . too late . . . too late for that . . . we have to settle this once and for all, we’re gonna get your boss on the phone. We’re gonna make sure all your bullshit checks
