“I can shoot lefty,” he said. “Don’t think I can’t… Goddamn, Snake. You’re starting to look rough.”
“I’m cut up a little,” said Snake. “I don’t mind. Pain turns me on.”
“That’s a good thing,” Fat Boy said. “I hope ugly is all right too. And I ’specially hope that smell does something for you.”
“It’s not a bother to me,” Snake said.
“Bothers him enough he don’t do any of his own shopping,” Fat Boy said to me, as if he were telling a drinking buddy a simple fact. “And watch a movie with him, man, I got to set by an open door or have a fan going, or both.”
“It’s other people notices it,” Snake said. “I don’t mind.”
“Got a disease of some kind,” Fat boy said. “What he says, anyway. Glands are fucked up.”
“What’s him knowing my business got to do with anything?” Snake said.
“I like to talk,” Fat Boy said. “What’s him knowing something he won’t know long matter anyhow?” Fat Boy turned his attention back to me. “He puts on cologne to cover it up. He thinks. But it’s really bad then. Like shit with Old Spice on it, ain’t it, Snake?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Fat Boy,” Snake said.
“He don’t want me to fuck with him,” Fat Boy said, “and he can’t go nowhere with that smell or that damn snake on his head and he’s got to depend on me to get his groceries so he don’t get seen, and he tells me not to fuck with him. Not for me he’d be eating out of a garbage can or something, and he don’t want me to fuck with him. What is it you want, Snake? Huh?”
Snake took his foot off the back of my knee. I looked over my shoulder and saw him bring up his arm and look at his watch.
“I want we should go. That’s what I want. I don’t like to miss none of it. I like everything from the start.”
As I turned my head away from Snake, back toward Fat Boy, my sight went low and I saw a stain like mud on the top of Snake’s shoe. I knew it wasn’t mud. It was shit. Bill’s shit. It had dripped out of his pants legs and onto Snake’s shoes while Snake had held him, causing him to strangle more rapidly on the belt.
I finished turning my head. I glared at Fat Boy. He said, “He don’t want to miss none of it. Like he’s gonna remember the credits or something. Like he’s taking notes. All right. All right, Snake, my man. We’ll get on with it.”
But Fat Boy didn’t move from his chair. He sat quietly for a moment and puffed his cigar and didn’t take it out of his mouth. Ash fell off the end of it and onto his lap and he brushed at the ash casually with the automatic, making a grey streak across his pink pants. He looked at Beverly and smiled and moved his hand between her legs. “Man, man,” he said.
Thunder rumbled outside.
Fat Boy cocked his head at the thunder. “Storm’s getting serious, ain’t it? It’ll blow your movie out, Snake.”
“You don’t know that,” Snake said.
“Wishful thinking,” Fat Boy said, and removed his hand from Beverly and pinched the cigar out of his mouth. He thumped the ashes on the floor this time. “What we got here Mr. I-Got-It-Made, is a major fuck up. Right, Snake?”
“You’re the one fucked up,” Snake said.
“Part of it,” Fat Boy said. “But you got to admit, fate didn’t play right.” Fat Boy studied me for a hard moment. “Mr. I-Got-It-Made, I don’t hate to take you out at all. Not at all. But you know, I got to tell you, had the wind blown slightly different, we wouldn’t be here. You’d be coming home to a little fuzz taco tonight.” Fat Boy bent down and reached under the bed and pulled out a sheer, white nightie. It matched the panties around Snake’s hand. “She had this on when we got here,” Fat Boy said. “I like to imagine she wore them for me. But I don’t think so. She was waiting on you. All saddled up and ready to go. I like that. Wives these days, they don’t do that anymore. Or so I’m told. But here you got one does. That’s all right, man. All right.”
“You can’t rent Mothra in this town, Snake said. “I’ve called around. They don’t have it. Reptilicus neither.”
“You should have taped it,” Fat Boy said. “You should have done that.” t="
“The VCR has bad sound. Everything I tape goes up and down on the sound. You can’t hear it good. Makes you nervous to watch it. I can’t stand to watch when the sound’s bad.”
“You rent Mothra at any of your stores?” Fat boy asked me.
“No,” I said.
“Those cassettes you got downstairs? Your own collection? You ain’t got Mothra there, do you? Or this other one? What is it, Snake?”
“ Reptilicus, ” Snake said.
“You got that one?” Fat Boy asked.
“No,” I said.
“All right, Snake,” Fat Boy said. “We’re gonna wrap this up now.” Then to me: “I like to keep Snake happy. He can do some jobs I don’t like, and I got to keep him happy. Before we go, I’d like to say you and that half-brother of yours did some pretty good figuring on what was going on. Me and Snake, we took the Doc’s wife out for him. We admit it. We did it. We did it for money. Snake, he banged her. Right, Snake?”
“That’s right,” Snake said. “Doc didn’t care. He told us go ahead with whatever we wanted. And I could have done this one, Fat Boy, you weren’t so long winded.”
“He’s something, ain’t he?” Fat Boy said. “Prefers Mothra over a woman. Won’t cost him a thing to mount your piece and ain’t a thing anybody can do about it, and he wants to see some giant bug or monster thing tear up a toy truck.”
Fat Boy paused and sucked on his cigar and blew out some smoke and took interest in it till it faded. He said, “Snake here, he got the cassettes from downstairs. Took a little peek on your TV to make sure. Says ain’t much there. But some questions could be raised and I’d rather not have that. So, we’re taking the cassettes.”
Fat Boy removed his cigar and blew on the tip of it and turned his head slowly to Beverly. “Couple things got to be cleaned up. Your brother Arnold for one… That was Snake’s fuck up. But we’ll clean that up. There’s ways. The photo book though. That’s my personal copy that I was going to donate to the cause of framing your asshole nephew. I’d like it back. I don’t care who sees it long as I arrange how it’s seen. Where is it?”
“I gave it to Arnold,” I said.
Fat Boy said. “Gave it to Arnold, huh?”
He took the cigar out of his mouth and blew on the tip again. The tip turned cherry-colored. Fat Boy leaned over Beverly. “What I’m gonna do here, is stick the end of this on your wife’s tit. That’s a sensitive place, the tit.” Fat Boy leaned forward suddenly and licked Beverly’s nipple. A sound came from Beverly’s throat, behind the rubber ball. It sounded small and pitiful. I had never heard a sound from her like that before. She had dealt with things in our life up until now without that sound.
I knew it was pointless, but I couldn’t help myself. “Please,” I said. “Don’t hurt her. Take me. Leave my family alone.”
Fat Boy put the cigar back in his mouth. “Hey, I ch. r. an do any fucking thing I want. I’m gonna burn her tit off, is what I’m gonna do, you don’t talk to me about that photo album.”
I’m uncertain what prompted me to keep the lie. I suppose, deep down, I knew the truth wouldn’t change anything. And if my family was going to die, I wanted to make sure I went out without making things easy for these two assholes.
From what they’d said, my impression was Bill hadn’t mentioned the lawyer or that I had made copies of the cassettes and given them to Virgil along with the photo album. Something happened to us, Virgil might pursue things on our behalf. At this point, it was almost a moot matter. Still…
“I swear, on my wife’s life,” I said. “I gave the album to Arnold.”
Fat Boy sucked on the cigar and bent over Beverly and blew smoke in her face. She squinted her eyes and turned her head. Fat Boy looked at Snake. “What’d you think?”
“I think I’m gonna miss fucking Mothra is what I think.”
“Naw, naw, you’re not. What’d you think?”