Sway (3 page)

“And you just want me to get her to go out with you?”

“Yeah, just get her to go on a date with me. I'm thinking she's the type you've got to take it slow—like three or four dates before you really expect her to put out.”

“Sounds expensive,” I said. “Maybe a hooker would be cheaper.”

“Yeah.” Ken chuckled a little at that because he's the kind of asshole who would find that funny. “But this girl … Well, anyway, it's worth a little extra effort.”

“If you say so,” I said. “Give me two weeks and I'll have something for you.”

“Two weeks?” he huffed, indignant. “What the hell are you going to do that requires two weeks?”

“Look, I'll get you the girl if that's what I'm hired to do. My method is confidential. Take it or leave it.”

“Fine,” he said. “But homecoming is only two months from now. I want her to be mine before homecoming.”

“You said her name was Bridget Smalley?” I asked as I pulled out my phone and tapped in some notes on my calendar. Between brokering term papers, getting juvenile delinquents kicked out of school, and delivering party favors for keggers like Ken's, I barely had time to think. Not thinking was the ultimate goal.

 

THREE

It was a perfect New England autumn evening, the failing sunlight painting the world gold, so I drove to Digger's house with the top down on my '63 Thunderbird. The town was choked with bright splashes of orange, red, and yellow as the trees tuned up for their annual show. I wound my way through the historic downtown—quaint tree-lined streets with antique shops, boutiques, and restaurants—this time of year filled with tourists who came from New York and beyond for the fall colors.

Outside of town the majestic historic buildings gave way to subdivisions of newer prefab homes and then, farther out, trailer parks and wooden Cape Cod–style houses that were little more than shacks. Here there were only strip malls filled with Walmarts, dollar stores, and tobacco outlet shops. Most people never saw this side of the town—few had any reason to venture out here on the fringe where the janitors and bus drivers and lunch ladies lived.

Digger greeted me at the door with a grunt and didn't wait to see if I followed him inside.

“God damnit!” he snapped as he sat down and slapped his wiry thigh in disgust. “I told her to DVR one god-damn show for me and the fucking thing is full of shit about fat chicks trying to lose weight and episodes of
Jersey Shore
.”

Digger was complaining about his wife, an inexplicably appealing woman with overplucked eyebrows and a large collection of tracksuits. He would never talk about her that way in her presence, was terrified of her, but when she wasn't around he liked to talk big, like he wore the pants.

The fact that Digger was married is proof that there is someone out there for everyone. Wiry and gritty, with dirt caked into his torn cuticles, he appeared ten years older than his actual age of thirty-four.

Digger was content at the top of his own little empire. He had risen to the rank of not just a tenant but an owner of a double-wide trailer, a fact that made him something of a god among the backwoods people who had reared him. He probably moved ten pounds of dope a month and the only reason he had never surfaced on any law enforcement radar was because there just weren't many people who could bring themselves to care that he even existed.

He worked full-time as a gravedigger in Mount Comfort cemetery, not far from his trailer park, probably making nine dollars an hour but enjoying the work. His people had scraped a living from the hardscrabble soil of hill country for generations and it was in his DNA to do backbreaking work and never be appreciated for it. The income from his dope dealing kept him well plied in Mountain Dew, Newport Golds, and enough satellite television channels to make NASA green with envy.

At some point in his history he had served six years for armed robbery in a federal penitentiary. Since leaving the joint, he had never been able to return to normal, hardly ever left his house other than to go to work, and was prone to some strange paranoias. A normal paranoia would be a belief that the cops had him under surveillance, but he focused on more creative worries that usually involved global conspiracies—birth control in the water supply, or drug cartels putting additives in marijuana to reduce the productivity of working-class white males in America.

Digger was a punk. A stoner. A hillbilly.

And a survivor. I can respect a survivor.

Not that he was exceptionally bright or entrepreneurial, which in his business is a requirement if you want to get anywhere near the top of the heap. Digger was like a guy who sells dime bags at a Phish concert. That's not enterprising—he's just another loser in a sea of mediocrity. I respect the guy who sells grilled cheese sandwiches in the parking lot after the Phish show. He's innovative, a thinker, the kind of person you want on your side after the apocalypse comes and the survivors are living off cockroaches and radioactive water.

This afternoon, Digger was hepped up on some kind of goofball. Not the bright green ganj he was pushing, the buds sticky and heavy and virtually free of seeds. He was wired and kept shifting in his La-Z-Boy, his skinny ass making barely a dent in the cushion.

He carefully shredded the weed and loaded a bong hit, which, I knew, would get passed to me. Pot-buying etiquette dictated that the buyer had to take a bong hit in the presence of the dealer. Some long-standing myth was involved, that an undercover narc wouldn't smoke dope for real because then he would be subject to criminal charges himself. All bullshit, of course. Anyone who believed that had less legal knowledge than the average schlemiel who watched
Law & Order.

Weed is not my drug. It makes you slow and stupid. But etiquette was etiquette and I would take the bong hit.

I don't create waves. I ride them.

“Man, this shit is the kind bud,” Digger said with an eager smile as he held the three-foot Graphix bong out to me like a sword. “Shotgun,” he said, as if I hadn't taken a hundred bong hits sitting at his four-piece living room suite.

I tried to hold back the cough, knowing it would just make my head dizzier. A surprisingly good buzz, a creeper.

Digger could tell I approved of the pot and it made him happy. He really was kind of like a kid and I wondered how he had ever happened onto a gig as golden as this one. He worked with a few guys like me, one rep each at the three high schools in the area, and counted on us to move his product. It wasn't even real work since the right people knew where to find me, knew the rules, and had the money to pay.

“Weren't you just here like three days ago, man?” Digger asked me as he leaned back in his chair and lit a Newport.

“Yeah, business has been good.”

“Apparently. What do you want?”

“Couple of ounces.”

He left the room and returned a minute later with a grocery bag. I opened it and pulled out two ziplock bags as Digger started fiddling with his remote again.

“This one's light,” I said, tossing one of the bags on the coffee table.

“Aw, shit, man, I bet that god-damn bastard is stealing from me again.”

Digger was talking about his wife's son, a twenty-year-old with bad acne and a nasty disposition. Grim was his name; at least that was what everyone called him, even his mom. I knew Grim in another context and made regular work out of avoiding him.

I managed to extricate myself from Digger's den after another thirty minutes of meaningless conversation and a second bong hit.

I called Heather Black on my way home from Digger's place and she sounded surprised yet pleased when I asked her out for the following Friday night.

“Sure,” she said. “What's the occasion?”

“No occasion. I just feel like going out for a meal. We'll go to Paolo's,” I said, knowing it was her favorite because it was expensive. A girl like Heather, all her taste is in her mouth.

 

FOUR

When I got home that evening, Dad wasn't there. Not surprising. The sound of Wagner's
Tristan und Isolde
filled the house, which meant that Joey had used the hidden extra key, and she was in a mood. I dropped my messenger bag on the kitchen floor and went into the living room to find Joey stretched out on the couch.

Dressed all in black, hair dyed black, fingernails black with paint, and almond-shaped eyes outlined with goopy black makeup, she looked younger than her seventeen years. If she was pretty, it was impossible to tell under all the trappings of her teenage angst. Her figure had not changed much since eighth grade, which is when we met in the waiting area outside the principal's office. Joey had always had a big mouth and it got her into trouble on a regular. She couldn't stop herself from making wiseass comments about everything, but she could keep a secret better than anyone, and that made her a valuable partner.

Joey was lying perfectly still on the couch, arms crossed over her chest like a corpse.

“What are you doing here?” I asked as I turned off Wagner and put on the XM radio.

“I was listening to that,” she said.

“I hate Wagner.”

“Not always,” she said. “Only since your mom—”

“What's with the getup?” I asked, ignoring her comment.

Her reply was only silence for a long minute as she tried to test my patience. “If by ‘getup,' you mean my predilection for the color black,” she said as her eyes slid shut again, “I'm protesting the culture of greed and corporate corruption that influences our consumption. I'm denying the fashion of the moment, the media's attempt to dictate what beauty is.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, distracted as I surfed for the channel I wanted.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“Busy day.”

“Busy with what?” she pressed.

“If I told you, you wouldn't believe it.”

“I'm waiting to be astounded. Hold on, let me practice my look of amazement.” Her eyes flew open and her mouth gaped as she blinked rapidly. “How was that?”

“Creepy,” I said with only a glance in her direction. “Don't you have a home to go to?”

“Speaking of creepy, my mom's boyfriend is staying over tonight. I'm perfectly comfortable right here.” Though she would never publicly admit it, Joey was embarrassed by her poverty and her mother, who was too young to have been out of high school when she gave birth to Joey. Her mother worked as a waitress at a local restaurant, wore too-short skirts for a woman her age, and had a tramp stamp at the base of her spine.

“You have something for me?” I asked.

She sighed as she sat up, then reached into her bra and threw something onto the coffee table.

“Do I need to check them?” I asked as I sank into the chair across from her.

“If you want,” she said, sounding pissed, with a twitch of her shoulder, “but if you're asking me if they're okay, then the answer is yes.”

“I'm just asking. The last time you picked up merchandise for me, you didn't check them and I ended up with almost six hundred dollars' worth of fake IDs I couldn't sell, because the birth year on them made the person only nineteen years old. It's not like Skinhead Rob has a return policy.”

“You're never going to let me live that one down, are you?” she asked with a weary roll of her eyes.

“Should I?” I asked, matter-of-fact. “I'm not selling people IDs so they can register to vote. They expect them to work to buy alcohol.”

“Yeah, okay, Sway,” she said, using my nickname because she knew it would annoy me, “I get it. I fucked up last time. But it's only because Skinhead Rob freaks me out. I hate going to his place. And that pimply guy Grim always looks at me as if he wants to rape me.”

“Well, you're not bad looking,” I said, “which almost makes up for your piss-poor attitude. I'm surprised you aren't flattered by the attention.”

“Stop trying to piss me off,” she said as her eyes narrowed into slits. “I'm not interested in getting sucked into your head games right now.”

“You get pissed off at me whether I make the effort or not,” I said as I clasped my hands over my gut and tipped my head back. “I'm just being honest.” I was hungry, but too tired to get up and fix something.

“Oh, yeah,” she said with ironic sincerity. “If nothing else, you're always honest. Anyway, DJ Kiddush is spinning at Plant Nine this Friday. Want to go get your freak on?”

“Can't,” I said. “I have a date.”

“A date with who?”

“Heather Black.”

“You're seeing her again?” she asked, disapproval clear in her tone. “You know, you could do much better.”

“You think so?” I asked as I idly swung the chair from side to side.

“Sure. You're a hottie. If I were straight, I'd totally be into you.”

“You're just saying that because you're my best friend.”

“I'm your only friend,” she corrected.

“True. But, no, the thing with Heather, it's just business.”

“What kind of business?”

“Nothing worth mentioning, though I did get an interesting request from that douche football player Ken today.”

“I hate that guy,” Joey said with feeling. “You shouldn't do anything to help him out.”

“I'm not doing it out of the goodness of my heart. It's just a job.”

“Well, anyway,” she said, “I hate him.”

“I'm surprised to hear you care anything at all about him.”

“He always calls me a dyke,” she said with a shudder.

“You
are
a dyke.”

“No,” she said loudly as she held up a finger to school me. “Dykes wear flannel and Chuck Taylors and hate men. I'm a lesbian. I have never worn flannel in my life.”

“If you say so.”

“You want to get Chinese food?” she asked suddenly. “I'm starving.”