"I heard that too.
An' I don't give a fuck about your in-tent, boy.
This is not the kind of employee de-portment I am happy with, you unnerstan' that?"
"I surely do.
I understand that."
Jack didn't have to turn and look.
He knew Ortega and Ahmed had managed to disappear.
Jack didn't blame them for that.
Rhino's slinging shit, you don't want any to land on you.
"You want to keep straight, you want to be happy in your work, you want to get along with me?"
"Yes, sir, I guess that's what I want to do."
"You guess?
What is fucking guess, Jack?
Guess ain't a word you be usin' on me..."
And Rhino pokes and punches each word right into Jack's chest, pokes with a finger hard as a sap, pounds it and grinds it, jabs it to the bone, and Jack, clearly not thinking, not thinking at all, pushes this fat, intrusive finger aside, not like he's mad, not so Rhino can take the gesture wrong, maybe kill him on the spot, maybe stomp him flat.
"Hell, I never done anything to piss you off," Jack said, not backing off at all, "you got no cause to be stompin' on me.
You talk like I'm fuckin' off alla time and that ain't so.
I do what you tellin' me, takin' your shit, whatever you dishing out. You got no right jumping on me, I'm not doing nothing worse than nobody else."
Rhino simply looked at Jack, gazed at him with his cold and scary eyes, eyes that were tiny ball bearings in a 40-weight pit. For an instant, for a second and a half, Jack was fairly certain he didn't have a chance, that Rhino would do him right there.
Then, he saw something in those eyes he couldn't make out. Something uncertain, something like doubt.
Something like pieces of a puzzle Rhino couldn't figure out.
Then, in a blink, he was Rhino again, breath like a dead man, pores full of shit.
"Get to those dishes, get 'em done quick," he told Jack.
"And don't be talkin' uncivil to me, don't be doing that again."
It was over, and Jack was still alive, and Rhino was gone...
J
ack figured you could walk into Piggs any time of the year.
You'd been in a coma, say, didn't know it was Christmas or Easter or the Fourth of July.
Nothing had changed, nothing was different from the time you'd been before.
Once, he couldn't say when, taking a pee or eating a Mars, he was struck with wisdom unaware, and saw why people came into Piggs, why they did it all the time.
They didn't want a fucking tree, they didn't want a purple egg. What they wanted was to get away from people who did.
Family and friends and uncles and aunts.
Wives, who wanted to fucking drive somewhere with the kids in the back and a battleship dragging ass behind.
They didn't want something different, they wanted things the same.
They wanted girls to take their clothes off as nature had intended them to do.
They wanted to have a cold beer, and they didn't want to go home ever again.
And Jack, squeezing through the raucous, happy, semi-conscious crowd, juggling a tray of Five-Spice Chicken, Moo Shu Pork, Hunan Beef and Kung Po Shrimp above his head, knew he was afflicted as well, that he had the fever too, that it might be Tuesday or Friday afternoon.
It might be Sunday, for Piggs was open on the Lord's day as well.
The gang in Piggs was grateful for pussy, and didn't think God would take offense at all.
Jack forgot who had ordered what, and no one complained, for it tasted all the same.
Four lawyers and a judge, all from San Antone, and the only law they knew was Maggie Thatch, riding on the judge's chubby knee.
"You seen Gloria or what," Jack asked her. "She's supposed to be on, she isn't anywhere."
"Shit, Jack, I am busy here, all right?
How'd I know?"
"I thought you might is all."
"Well I don't, and you are interfering with my customer's delight."
"I can't see how I'm doing that."
A lawyer with a beard tried to see around Jack.
"I can't see the ladies, you standing there, son.
Get us a couple Buds all around."
"I'm your food person," Jack said, "you got to see a wait person 'bout that."
The lawyer said 'fucking little fag,' or words to that effect.
Jack left a bill for $38.97, making up tax in his head, adding five bucks, certain these assholes wouldn't leave a tip.
H
e brought a plate of buffalo wings to a customer at the bar.
Stopped, on the way back to Wan's, saw Gloria just as she vanished through the dressing room door, turned and followed her in.
"I'm on, Jack, I can't stop and talk right now."
Gloria didn't bother to turn around.
She stood at the mirror, doing that thing girls do when they're putting their lipstick on, like they're coming up for air, breathing like a fish.
"And don't come bargin' in like that. Maggie and Alabama don't like it, they're going to get a lock."
"I'm a authorized employee, Gloria.
And don't be putting any locks on here, that's a fire code violation's what it is.
I'll catch hell for that."
"Well don't be doing it then.
Don't be barging in."
Gloria dropped her robe, let it fall around her feet, and Jack felt his heart try to jump out of his chest.
He could see her naked a hundred times a day, didn't matter how many, it was always the same.
Sometimes she looked like a statue, the ones in magazines.
Perfect all over, not a zit or a mole.
That was easy, you were marble, some kind of stone, but a real girl, that was something else again.
"You going to stand there an' look all day?
My God, Jack, I feel like I ought to put clothes on you come around.
It isn't a natural thing, looking like that."
"I want you and me to go out.
We talked about it, you said you liked Denny's just fine, you wouldn't mind a pie. You said you liked it cold and I said so did I."
"I know we talked about that.
There just hasn't been time."
"I know about the time, all right.
You got plenty to do, I guess I'm aware of that."
Gloria turned to face him, no blemish, no blotch, no mark of any kind.
No anger, no flush, not anything at all, and he wished she liked him more than that.
"You got somethin' on your mind, Jack, it better not be 'bout private personal business of mine.
If it is, you surely better keep it to yourself 'cause I will not put up with intrusions on my life.
I have spent a great deal of time working up the strength to assert my inner self.
That is mine, and you will not fuck with it, friend, not you or anyone else."
"I'm just saying, you take it any way you like, but I mean it as a friend.
Any pretense at true romance from Ricky Chavez is as cheap as that candy he's carryin' around.
An' I'd think twice you let him in your home.
Don't matter how rich a greaser gets, he sees something lyin' around, it's gone, okay?
No racial offense, that's just the way it is.
I hope you'll think about that."
Gloria looked away, looked at anything but Jack.
"I can only imagine you are real uncertain of yourself right now.
I'm sure it has to do with that awful incident with Cat, and your anger is spilling on me.
That's the way I'll try to see it in my head.
If I can find the will for that, I might be able to speak to you again.
You will know if that happens.
If it doesn't, stay out of my way, and I am talking fucking forever, you hear me, Jack?"
"It's that Mescan thing, isn't it?
I hadn't said that, we'd be all right."
"No, we wouldn't be all right.
You got some real abrasive qualities, Jack, things you're gonna have to hone down.
Jesus, I don't know if you even understand that."
"Yeah, I do. It's been mentioned to me before."
"Then you got somewhere to start."
Jack looked at her.
"I was going to pull a couple jobs, get some ahead.
I thought I had something to offer, you'd see me in a different light, see me different than I am.
First I was going to take Ortega's car.
Now I kinda see that's a ignoble thing to do."
"My God, you sound like someone deranged, you know what?
You scare the hell out of me, you talk like that."
"No, what you're hearing's not that. I think what you said, Gloria, what you said tonight, that's already working inside.
I think what it is, I've grown a little tonight..."
"You what?"
"What I said, you know?
You hit on stuff I need to work on in myself, and I appreciate that.
One thing is, I have not thought about Mescans as much as I should.
I'm going to think more about 'em now."
"I'd stay off of that if I was you."
"Huh-uh, that's what I been doing, Gloria.
I been letting racial shit stand in the way of my personal regards.
I don't like fucking Mescans, okay?
But that's not the thing, I don't like Ortega and he's a friend.
I don't like him in a different way I don't like Ricky Chavez.
I didn't see that clear till I was talking 'bout him to you."
"Didn't see what, Jack?"
"Ricky Chavez is one rich greaser.
Ortega's poor as a dog.
You wouldn't think about doing it with someone like him."
"Doing it."
"You know. Doing it."
"Yeah, I do know, you stupid son of a bitch."
Gloria's eyes turned so cold, Jack thought he might come down with the flu right there.
"Sometimes words come out the way I want 'em to," he said, certain this would take him nowhere at all.
"That's a shortcoming I hope to work on as well."
"Don't work on nothing for me, all right?
Don't trouble yourself, don't hurt your fucking head."
Gloria turned away abruptly and snatched the robe off her chair, slipped it on and held it tight around the neck.
"Now what's that for?"
Jack looked pained.
"What'd I do?"
"I am not comfortable talking to you naked anymore, Jack, and I feel bad about that.
I feel you have broken a bond between us."
"What kinda bond was that?
You won't even go out for pie."
"Maybe pie just wasn't meant to be, hon." She checked her hair in the mirror, licked her little finger, and brushed a curl across her cheek.
"If it wasn't, you know, it's a whole lot easier to find out now.
Sometimes it's best you nip something like that before it gets to pie..."
C
ecil was making a big thing out of a guy in a black Stetson hat, some singer Jack had seen on TV.
The guy had a short girl with him, and she was a singer too, maybe twelve, thirteen, but made up older than that.
They both wore cowboy suits with flowers and cactus sewn on the shirts, and the same kind of boots.
The girl had hardly any tits, and thick legs she covered with a fringe.
The singers were autographing pigs.
The girl singer picked one up and the little pig squealed and the little girl laughed and kissed it on the head.
The pig was one of three new piglets romping about in the big glass tanks, in place of the three that had gotten too big, and Rhino had taken next door the night before.
The pigs would go to Tex Savallo, the butcher, and come back as barbecue sandwiches Cecil sold for three ninety-five at the bar.
This was a truth Jack had stumbled on some time before. A sandwich is a sandwich and a pig is a pig.
That was a fact any kid over four could plainly see, but no one connected the two.
People thought about cows and they thought about steaks.
But they didn't think about them at the very same time.
What people did, they filed things away in their heads where they wanted them to be.
Like fuck is over here, and your dick falling off from some awful disease is over there.
Jack wondered if Ahmed and Ortega knew about this, and decided he'd tell them sometime.