Sway (20 page)

“I'm serious.”

“Yeah, I got it,” he said, raising his voice to get the last word. “I got it, I just don't want it,” he muttered to himself.

We rode for the next thirty minutes without talking much. Plant Nine was in the old warehouse district near the water, far from the bustle of the city. I pulled into an empty parking space at the curb and shut off the engine. “Be cool,” I said, my hand resting on the door handle. “Keep your mouth shut and be cool.”

By habit I slowed my gait to match Pete's as we walked along the crumbling sidewalk, though the pace at which he moved made it difficult to ever stay in step beside him. I always found myself a couple of steps ahead, even when I consciously slowed to a saunter. We crossed the deserted street and approached the club from the end of a long line of people waiting to get in. Pete stopped like he was going to hop in line, but I just shook my head and kept walking and he fell in behind me.

The lone bouncer was the kind of guy you only ever see in a movie—a giant redneck, tall and fat, his pale skin covered in tattoos—and looked like the kind of person who might torture kittens for recreation. Big D was an imposing figure, his massive frame swallowing the leather-topped barstool that sat outside the club door, his face fixed in a sneer. The aluminum stool groaned under his weight as he stood to greet me with a fist bump and a hug. I introduced him to Pete, who squawked when Big D ignored his outstretched hand and embraced him with a big squeeze. Pete stumbled back a step when he was let go.

“How you been, Sway?” Big D asked as he tugged his pants up at the waist and straightened his System of a Down T-shirt.

“I'm good, D,” I said, giving his shoulder a slap. “How've you been?”

“Oh, I'm staying out of trouble,” D said. “This your little brother?”

“Not by blood. Pete's part of that Big Brothers Big Sisters program. I'm like his mentor,” I said with a humble shrug.

D's face split into a grin and he let out a guffaw as he slapped Pete on the shoulder with a paw as big and meaty as a baseball mitt. Pete cried out in surprise as he barely kept his footing. “I gotcha,” D said with a chuckle. “You're like a positive male role model.” Pete recovered himself and subtly edged out of Big D's reach. “Look at that face,” Big D said to Pete as he grabbed me one-handed under the chin and squeezed my face in Jewish-grandmother fashion. “This boy could sell hell to a bishop.”

D was still chuckling to himself as he lifted the rope and let us walk in. There were some subdued mutters of protest as Pete and I got into the club while a line of partygoers still waited for their turn, but no one would directly challenge D or question his right to play favorites.

“Ow,” Pete said once we were out of earshot. “I think he dislocated my shoulder.”

“Just be glad he likes you,” I said over the thump of the bass music.

We made our way through the labyrinth of rooms that had once been a factory of some kind, the original purpose for the building long forgotten. It had been converted to a club, each room filled with pastimes to appeal to any audience—pool tables in one room, a bar with stools in the next, and multiple dance floors on two levels with a different DJ spinning in each space. There weren't many lights, which helped to conceal the disrepair and the peeling paint, the bare concrete floors painted black. Spotlights hung over the bars, allowing the bartenders to see to work, and the pool tables and dartboards had spotlights as well. Black lights illuminated the rest, casting an artificially healthy glow on the club kids.

Pete followed me to a courtyard with an outdoor bar and wooden decking for a dance floor. Industrial techno hummed from the giant speakers parked at two corners of the dance floor, an observation deck above it where people sat drinking, smoking, and talking as they watched the few dancers. The guys who danced to the industrial techno wore ripped jeans, black T-shirts emblazoned with the logos of bands I had never heard of, metal chains connecting their wallets to their pants or adorning their heavy black boots.

Pete and I were out of place, our clothes plain and conservative in comparison. It was always that way. I was here, in the middle of it, but somehow none of it ever had anything to do with me. I was an observer. Removed. Distant.

Most of the people here thought they were making some kind of social statement. Everybody getting their freak on. All trying to outfreak the next guy. More piercings, more tattoos—drawing attention to themselves so that … well, I wasn't really sure why.

Maybe without all that extra stuff, there was nothing worth mentioning about them. Or maybe they didn't get enough attention at home and wanted it from strangers on the street. Whatever the reason, they all seemed to pride themselves on being different, but in reality they all ended up looking the same, and treated anyone from outside their tight little clique like a leper.

Steve was where I expected to find him, leaning back on one elbow as he stood at the bar watching the crowd around him. His eyes traveled over the young girls who thronged at the bar, most of them sipping on Cokes because they were too young to buy alcohol.

There always seemed to be something a little off with Steve. Maybe it was that his eyes were open a little too wide, his grin too broad to be genuine, his speech too affected to not be rehearsed. He was part owner, or maybe just a manager, of the club, a detail he never clarified—probably because he wanted you to believe he was more of a rock star than he really was. Still, it was his playground and if I wanted to play, I needed to make nice with him. I didn't like him or trust him, but neither point was relevant.

Steve's blond hair was thin on top but he still wore it in a long ponytail, as if the hair in back could compensate and anyone who observed him would not notice his hair loss. His age was indeterminate in the low light of the club but the condition of his skin suggested he was much older than the girls he chose to date.

Steve's eyes never stayed fixed on any one thing for more than a second or two. His gaze traveled the room while he spoke or listened, never looking anyone in the eye. It could make a person uncomfortable but, on the rare occasion when he did meet your eye, you'd immediately wish he would look at something else. There wasn't much to see through the windows to his soul, but what was there was not pleasant to contemplate.

“Well, look who it is,” Steve said by way of greeting as he untangled himself from a girl who was barely old enough for her tattoos to have been acquired legally.

“Hey, Steve,” I said as I shook his hand, palming him a dime bag filled with a few hits of X and a large bud. “My buddy Pete,” I said with a nod in Pete's direction. Pete nodded in greeting but kept his mouth shut—a small miracle.

Steve ignored Pete, which was the way I wanted it. Steve shouted for the bartender to bring us a couple of shooters and clinked his glass against mine before tipping his head back to slurp the cocktail. Etiquette dictated I take the shot. The price of doing business, though I didn't want to pay it.

“What are you looking at?” Steve asked suddenly, directing his comment over my shoulder to Pete. A grin was still plastered on Steve's face, but it was fixed like a grimace, no mirth evident.

“Who? Me?” Pete asked, pointing at his own chest.

“Yeah, you,” Steve said, mimicking Pete's tone of surprise. “Who do you think I'm talking to?”

“I was—” Pete turned to me for help but I just watched him expectantly. “I was just watching the … people. You know, looking around,” Pete said uncertainly.

“Well, that people you can't seem to stop looking at happens to be my girlfriend,” Steve said.

“Hey, I didn't mean … I mean, I'm not…” Pete looked to me again for help.

“What's with this kid?” Steve asked, turning to me.

I jerked my head to one side, indicating that Steve should step aside with me so I could speak to him without being overheard. Steve shot one last scathing look at Pete, then stepped over to where I stood waiting a few feet away.

“Look,” I said in a hushed tone, “the kid's okay. He's just spent some time in juvie. He was all kinds of messed up on hallucinogens—shrooms, LSD, you name it—when they sent him down state for almost an entire year. Guards messed him up a little bit.”

“Yeah?” Steve asked, interest showing in his eyes as his gaze landed on Pete for a full ten seconds, longer than I'd ever seen him look at any one thing. “Guards messed with him?” he asked, the eagerness in his voice telling me he wanted more of the story.

“Yeah, he got his knee all busted up with a nightstick, hit in the head a few times. He's a little … off now, but he's cool,” I said, shooting a furtive glance over my shoulder as if to make sure Pete couldn't overhear our conversation. “He hates cops now. Would probably kill one if he got the chance.”

“That's messed up,” Steve said, a newfound respect for Pete dawning in his eyes.

I shrugged. “Yeah.”

It didn't take Steve long to lose interest in us and I gestured discreetly to Pete to follow me. A series of dark passages led to an interior space with a high ceiling and a dance floor the size of a basketball court, where hundreds of people moved under the flashing strobes and disco ball.

Kiddush was spinning in this room, the main and largest dance floor, and the crowd was loving it. He was playing an M.I.A. song and I nudged Pete's arm to get his attention. “Fall in and dig it!” I said in a shout to be heard over the music.

“What?” Pete shouted back.

“Let's dance.”

“I don't know how,” he said, sounding a little desperate.

“Nobody cares,” I said over my shoulder as I walked into the crowd.

I moved to the center of the floor where a group of girls were dancing together and started to move. Kiddush was good at his job, playing his own remix of the song, and the crowd was pumped. I kept an eye on Pete to see how he was doing. What he had said was correct, he couldn't dance, but at least he was moving around, not standing in one spot and shifting from one foot to the other like most guys did.

As I watched him move under the flashing strobe, his movements seemed natural, almost fluid, and had lost their usual jerkiness under the shifting light. In the mix of shadows and movement you couldn't tell there was anything different about him. Suddenly he was the man, throwing his hips and arms around like he was totally lost in the music. The girls moved in closer to dance with him, feeding off his energy, while I paired off with an ebony-skinned Caribbean girl who could shimmy like nobody's business.

Pete was a hit with the ladies and stayed out on the floor long after I retreated to the bar and passed off party favors to my regulars. He was still dancing when I concluded business and I pulled him behind me to separate him from the throng.

I took Pete up to the DJ booth to meet Kiddush, who greeted us both with a man hug. He put on an extended remix of a Drake song and went down to the dance floor to amaze the crowd with some of his vintage breakdance moves while Pete and I watched from the DJ booth. Sam had spent many lonely Friday nights as a teenager practicing his music and his dance moves with no other company than a mirror and a collection of old-school videos on DVD.

I had to drag Pete out of the place. He would have been there until last call if I had let him, but it's best to always be the last to arrive and first to leave a party.

 

TWENTY-NINE

When we left the club, it was still early and I had one more stop to make.

“We're going bowling?” Pete asked with a frown as I pulled into the lot of the local Games and Lanes.

“You can bowl if you want. I've got business,” I said as I climbed out of the T-Bird.

“Bridget and all of her friends have been hanging out here lately,” Pete said. “I'm not sure why. This place is a dump.”

I murmured a disinterested, “Mm,” as we headed for the entrance. A cop was stationed near the door. Now that most of the kids from the local high schools were hanging out at the Games and Lanes on Fridays and Saturdays, they kept an officer stationed here to make sure no one was drinking or getting pregnant in the parking lot.

“Hey, Jesse.” The cop nodded to me as I approached.

“Stan, how've you been?” I asked.

“Well, I pulled the crap duty tonight, didn't I?” he asked as he cracked the knuckles of his left hand.

“Looks like,” I said.

“You kids stay out of trouble,” he said with a small salute as I reached for the door handle.

The noise hit us like a wall as we entered the alley, all twenty lanes filled with just about every clique imaginable from the local high schools. The sound of their conversation was a dull roar interspersed with the crescendo of balls striking the pins at the ends of the lanes. The brown carpet had once featured some kind of pattern of gold and red, long since worn away with the tread of many bowling shoes. The carpet held the smell unique to bowling alleys everywhere, the stale rot of spilled soda, beer, and ketchup. A faint reminder of the cigarettes people used to smoke inside still hung in the air, an odor nothing less than a full renovation would ever wipe away.

“I'll find you in a bit,” I said to dismiss Pete as I headed toward the back of the house, to an unmarked office with a small window cut high in the door. I knocked once to announce myself, then opened the door and let myself in.

The owner, a man with the unfortunate name of Donald McDonald, sat behind a scarred wooden desk playing solitaire on an ancient desktop. Don was plump, his hands pale and doughy. He wore a handlebar mustache streaked with gray, his curly, grizzled hair receded far enough to give him a fivehead.

“Hey, kid,” he said, barely sparing me a glance.

“Hiya, Don,” I said as I helped myself to the folding chair across from his desk. “Looks like business is good.”