You guys… you guys oughta get the fuck outa here.
Aw, c’mon, little dude, we’re only trying to turn you on.
Yeah? Well, I ain’t turned on so forget about it, man. I got places to go, things to do.
You look so sad and cute sitting here all by yourself we figured you wanted company. We’re like cheerleaders. You know, like for cheering people up. Doncha wanna get cheered up?
The Kid sits back in his chair, folds his arms over his chest, and crosses one leg over the other trying to look gruff and casual at the same time. A grown man. Ex-military.
Tiger reaches down, pats his ankle through his jeans, and tugs his cuff back a few inches. What’s that thing?
Whaddaya mean? Nothin’.
No, what is it? It’s cool-looking.
Polka leans across the table for a look-see and the Kid quickly yanks his cuff back to his sneaker but can’t help peering down Polka’s bikini top. He can see between her breasts all the way to her dangling navel ring. Her glistening tanned skin is wet with sweat down there. And guaranteed warm to the touch.
Polka says, Show me. What is it?
Tiger says, Is it some kind of camera? Or a secret recorder? Are you a spy, little dude? You must be a secret spy working for the government, like in the CIA.
It’s nothin’.
I bet you’re spying on people. I can tell. Okay? You’re like sitting here pretending to read the paper and stuff only you’re really like a private detective checking on somebody’s wife meeting her boyfriend for sex.
Polka says, Cool! and yanks his cuff halfway up his calf. The Kid uncrosses his legs and plants both feet on the pavement under the table and shakes his cuff down.
No! It’s only… it’s like a kind of monitor. I got a heart condition and it monitors my heartbeat.
Awesome! Let’s see it work then. Let’s check your heartbeat. See if we can get it racing. See if we can give you a heart attack. That’d be really cool. Get you excited enough to have a heart attack. What’s your name?
Kid.
Awesome! I’m Stephanie and she’s Latisha. You want to play with us, Kid?
What do you mean, play with you?
Whatever you like. You got any money?
No.
Okay. You got a ATM card? I see you got a map there. We can show you some fun places if you want. You got a car? Where’s your hotel?
I’m not a tourist. I live here.
Where’s your place? We can go to your place if you want.
Why aren’t you two in school where you should be?
We graduated!
Yeah, sure. Babes on blades.
Slowly the Kid pushes back his chair and stands. He looks down and sees with relief that his pants are loose enough that his woodie doesn’t show. He takes a last lingering look at the two and almost choking says I’m outa here. Stuffs his map, newspaper, cigarettes, and cell phone into his backpack. Turns and walks away.
The girls watch him go, shrug and giggle and skate off in the opposite direction. Halfway down the block the Kid glances back as they roll past Victoria’s Secret. He sees them lifted quickly off the pavement by warm updrafts and over the heads of the pedestrians into the air. They soar above the trees and the flocks of squawking green parrots into the blue sky where they make slow interlocked circles and renew their search for unwary prey below. On the corner of Mantle and Rampart Road the man called Molly who carries a clutch bag and wears only a gold lamé Speedo and flip-flops gazes up at them mildly amused by their audacity and deftly rolls a joint without having to look at his hands. He looks down the block at the Kid and flashes him a wink and a pinkie-wave.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE KID LIKES HIS JOB AT THE MIRADOR. He’s a noon-to-ten-at-night busboy in a beachfront hotel restaurant the size of a major airport terminal which is pleasant enough — no previous experience required, no hierarchy among the busboys, no Babes on Blades — but beyond all that the job appeals to his innate affection for order and cleanliness. He gets to clear away dirty dishes, silverware, glassware, and crumpled napkins and strip the tablecloths off the tables. He gets to cart everything back to the kitchen and separate out the plates, cups, and saucers from the silverware and glassware and rack them in separate dishwashers and drop the used tablecloths into one basket and the stained napkins into another. Then he gets to go back to the dining room and shake out a fresh clean tablecloth and lay down four or six or eight shiny new place settings for the next batch of diners. He likes all this. He enjoys squaring the circle of the plate with the knives, spoons, and forks and folding the napkins into little cloth pyramids and placing them just so in the exact center of the plate. He takes pleasure in delivering the basket of bread and plate of little shell-shaped butter pats and filling the glasses with ice water and then disappearing until the meal is finished. And he likes wearing the starched white jacket with the mandarin collar. It makes him feel like he’s a scientist.
Most of all he likes the anonymity of a busboy. No one checks him out. No one asks his name. No one remembers him. It’s almost like being invisible. He’d make better money if he were a waiter but then he’d have to interact with the diners, describe the daily specials to them, reassure them about portion size, degree of spiciness, ask and answer dumb questions about hotness, coldness, well done, medium or rare, whether or not it really is kosher, endure the diners’ complaints and make small talk and smile all the while. He’d have to say, My name is Kid and I’ll be your server today. He’d have to come regularly to the table and ask, How is everything? He’d have to bring them their food and say, Bon appétit or Enjoy. Some of the waiters, usually the gay guys, just say, Enjoy. That is definitely not the Kid’s style. But neither is Bon appétit.
Actually the Kid doesn’t have a style. He can’t be pegged as one kind of person or another except by age, race, and gender. He’s a white guy in his early twenties. Otherwise he’s almost invisible. Which is the way he likes it. When he was a teenager in high school or working at the light store and later in the army at Fort Drum in upstate New York it bothered him that no one could seem to see him or remember having met him before or simply forgot he was present even when he was trying to draw attention to himself. It puzzled and irritated him and made him even more insecure than when he was alone and every now and then he tried to effect a personal style — he tried gangsta for a few months, then preppie. He tried techno-geek, goth, surfer dude, urban cowboy. Once at Fort Drum he tried sex machine and told the guys in his outfit that he’d auditioned for a porn flick but they needed nine and a half inches and he only had nine. The part about auditioning for a porn flick was a total lie but the part about nine inches was close enough. He had the biggest dick in the outfit but when his fellow soldiers dragged him into the showers and stripped him they just laughed at it and acted like it was wasted on him. Which it was.