hit.

“No, no, no, no . . . please!!! . . . Uncle Al . . . no!!!” He continued his performance, which didn’t seem to be out of mockery or disrespect to Al. I don’t know what it was but I didn’t believe it. There was something very Kabuki about it. Or at least what I imagined Kabuki to be like.

“Dope-smoking piece of shit . . . just like your father!” Al poked Norman in the ribs with the crutch. But it was a very gentle poke, I mean he barely touched him at all.

“Owwwwww!” Norman wailed as if he’d been shot with a bow and arrow. “Owwww!!! No!!!!” He was curled up on the floor and started sobbing and whimpering. It was the worst acting I had ever seen. Worse than the wrestlers on Channel 9.

“Sorry, Uncle Al . . . so sorry . . . so, so sorry . . .”

“I should crack your goddamn hophead skull.” Al poked him again, this time on his butt. But it might have been even lighter than the first poke. And once again Norman reacted like he’d been pierced with a red-hot iron rod.

“Owwwww! . . . Aaaaaaaahhh! . . . Nooooo! . . . I’m so sorry.”

“Should shove it right up your dirty fuckin’ ass, you ungrateful retard!!!”

I started to think that this was some kind of very bizarre routine and it wasn’t the first time this exchange had happened between them. There was a very stilted, rehearsed quality to it.

“You want more, shitheel? ’Cause I got more.”

“Noooo. Nooo, please. Please, Uncle Al . . .”

“Tell me what an asshole you are.”

“I’m an asshole, Uncle Al.”

“Tell me what a shitbag you are.”

“I’m a shitbag, Uncle Al.”

“A what?”

“An asshole shitbag.”

As their play got more pathetic and grotesque, I noticed that Al had opened a gash on his leg.

“Your leg’s bleeding.” I was glad to interrupt the high school dramatics. Al looked at me and I pointed to his leg.

“Get me some Band-Aids, shithead!” He tapped Norman on the shoulder with the crutch.

This time Norman didn’t scream bloody murder. He just sniffled, got to his feet, and walked quietly to the office.

“And the Mercurochrome!!” he shouted to his nephew. Then he held his handkerchief to the wound, peered at me, and said: “Stay away from drugs.”

I nodded.

“Lemme get this under control, then we’ll get the thing down and you can go.”

“Take your time,” I said.

Norman reappeared with a bunch of paper towels, some Band-Aids, and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Al cleaned and disinfected his wound and bandaged himself up while poor Norman and I got to work on the amplifier. He was incredibly strong for someone his size and we got the amp onto the hand truck and down the ramp without much trouble.

“Okay. One, two, three, four, five. And that’s for you.” Al counted out five hundred-dollar bills into my palm, and shoved ten singles into my shirt pocket. “You’re gonna bring me the case, right?”

“Yeah, of course,” I lied again. I had no intention of coming back at all.

“Tonight. Before midnight.”

“Okay.”

“And tell freakshow that Al said, Go fuck yourself.”

“I will.”

“You will?”

“Yeah.” I looked at the floor, then toward the office where Norman sat slumped in the desk chair picking his nose.

“You’ll get fired if you do. Don’t say that. Just make sure he gives you the case. I need the case. He has it but he gets so stoned that he forgets. It’s always like that with him, with half of the rejects I deal with. I should send my numbnuts nephew to work for him. Two peas in a pod.”

Al shook my hand, then as I climbed into the van he said, “How ’bout a Nehi for the road?” Before I could answer he shouted to Norman: “Hey! Get off your ass and get the kid an orange soda!”

Norman was now picking his teeth with the same finger that was just up his nose. He didn’t even bother to turn his head toward us. “Get it yourself, old man,” he said casually, the show now over.

Al looked at me and shook his head with the tiniest hint of a grin. “No respect. Kids today . . . no respect at all,” he muttered as he hopped to the fridge.

thirty

The second film featured a young woman, a girl really, I doubt she was eighteen. She was in a warehouse and there were two men with her and they were both old enough to be her father. I’d rather not get into the details of what transpired in the warehouse but it was ugly and disturbing. I’m guessing it was all consensual and the actors were just pretending it wasn’t. But that’s really more a hope than an assumption. I didn’t want to look but every time I tried to turn away I couldn’t. When the two men finally bent the girl into a particularly vulnerable and humiliating pose, I had seen enough and found the will to turn my head. That’s when everything in the room shifted. Or maybe it shifted a few minutes before the second movie started. I’m not so sure. I got pretty upset when I saw Smitty’s hand on Veronica’s leg. He was touching the stocking of her left leg and rubbing the inside of her thigh, just above the knee. Her legs were spread a little more than I think they were when we first sat down. I was feeling dizzy and light-headed. My pulse was racing and my heart beat fast. My thoughts became suspicious and paranoid. Had I been poisoned? I told myself it was the drug reaching its full effect but I didn’t believe it. Maybe Smitty and Veronica were in cahoots. I touched the necklace Veronica gave me. I was afraid it would start to choke me. My mind went back to the black magic store. Of course. How stupid could I be? Veronica and her family must belong to a satanic cult,

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