Lost Memory of Skin Page 6

  But for the Kid as the girls skate arabesques around his table everything mingles and blurs. Gold bracelets and earrings glint in the late-morning sun. Flocks of screeching green parrots watch like an aroused audience from the palms and tamarind trees that crowd the center of the mall.

  The Kid wants the girls to go away, please go away, and he wants them to stay and stay, please stay. He glances at each girl’s plum-shaped breasts as she passes, her taut belly, the sweet little pouch between her legs and he looks quickly off and up to her mischievously smiling face and as she swirls past and disappears in back of him he switches to the other girl’s face and down to breasts, belly, and pouch and then off her body at once bang and when she disappears behind him his gaze swings back to the face of the first girl again. He mustn’t linger on her body anywhere he mustn’t and tries fixing on her face but can’t keep himself located there for more than a second. His head nods up and down like a stringed puppet’s saying yes yes yes and flops side to side from one girl to the other saying no no no until finally they stop circling over him and Polka dives for the chair next to his and plants her elbows on the table and cups her head in her hands and gazes through half-lidded jade green contacts into his blinking eyes. All her moves very exact, very studied, very likely practiced in front of a mirror. Tiger comes to a stop too but stands next to him and watches as if holding a tray waiting her turn at a cafeteria counter. He feels his throat start to close and his blood thickens all through his body and he swallows hard but then suddenly realizes that seen up close like this the girls are not what they seem, they’re not grown women, eighteen- or twenty-year-old women. They’re girls. Teenage girls. A glistening pearl of sweat slips from Polka’s throat across her chest and slides between her breasts. Thirteen- or at best fourteen-year-old girls.

  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.

  Nowadays though he’s happy to be invisible. Sometimes when he’s clearing a table even though the waiters and waitresses wear black tuxedo-style jackets and the busboys are in white a diner mistakes him for a waiter and asks him to bring another menu or more bread or the check but he just pretends he doesn’t speak English and turns his back.

  Table seven is a large round VIP table over by a floor-to-ceiling window with a view of the beach and crashing waves and the turquoise ocean beyond. It’s usually bused by the pretty little Mexican girl who wants to be promoted to waitress so she does a lot of smiling and leaves the top two buttons of her jacket unbuttoned. But she called in sick today so as soon as the Kid comes into the kitchen ready for work Dario the manager assigns it to him.

  Hurry the fuck up and clear seven, they’ve already ordered dessert.

  Dario is Italian from Philly in his late thirties, dainty as a dancer with little hands and tiny wedge-shaped feet but hard-bodied, a man who works out regularly and dresses the same way every day like a prosperous gangster or an actor playing one in a black silk T-shirt, black Armani suit, sockless black Bally loafers, and a large faux-diamond pinkie ring. He has straight black hair in a ponytail and keeps a fresh carnation in his lapel and likes to be seen sniffing it. He reminds the Kid of Al Pacino in Scarface only without the scar.

  Dude, it’s only noon. What is it, a late breakfast? Brunch? We haven’t started serving brunch, have we?

  Don’t fuck with me, Kid. I let ’em in early. They got a golf game or something and needed to eat now.

  Must be big cheeses.

  Never mind that. Just get out there and clear the fucking table.

  There are four large beefy men at table seven, a thick-necked black guy with his back to the Kid facing the window and three white guys with barrel-bellies, all of them in pastel-colored golf clothes. Mob friends of Dario down from Philly, the Kid decides although he’s pretty sure Dario isn’t a real mobster, only a guy who likes to be regarded as one. He goes all smarmy and overhospitable whenever the real thing shows up at the restaurant. One of the white guys at the table looks Spanish and has a bad dye job on his black pencil-thin mustache and comb-over. The big black guy wears a baseball cap and even from behind looks familiar to the Kid. Usually he avoids looking at the diners’ faces when he clears the table but this time as he goes for the black guy’s plate and silverware he glances up and recognizes him.

  His legs go all watery and his breathing turns shallow and fast. O. J. Simpson is in the house! How weird is that? the Kid says to himself. More than weird, it’s a little scary because to his knowledge at least the Kid has never been this close to a real cold-blooded killer before. He somehow hadn’t realized O. J. Simpson was a real person and not just a famous killer who existed only on TV since nothing you know only from TV is real. Not even the news. Not even the president. He wonders what O. J. would do if the Kid accidentally knocked over his half-filled glass of red wine and it splashed into his large lap or dropped his plate of half-eaten ketchup-covered fries onto the floor and got ketchup all over O. J.’s spotless pale green slacks and white shoes.

  He sets the tray onto the folding stand beside the table and very carefully removes first O. J.’s knife, then the dishes and the rest of the silverware and the empty glasses. When he nervously reaches for O. J.’s wineglass the man places his brown football-size hand over it and shakes his head no and the Kid quickly backs off.

  Sorry sorry. Very sorry.

  I’ll have another glass of the Rhône.

  Yessir. I’ll tell your waiter.

  The man the Kid thinks is Spanish says, Bring me half a pear.

  O. J. laughs and says, Fucking half a pear! Why do you want only half a fucking pear? Get a whole one, for chrissakes, and eat half if you only want half a fucking pear.

  I only want half a pear. I wanted a whole fucking pear I’d order a whole fucking pear.

  O. J. says to the Kid, Bring my fastidious friend here half a fucking pear.

  Yessir.

  Dario is standing at the headwaiter’s desk by the door going over lunch reservations. As the Kid passes with his tray of dishes and silver and glassware from table seven he stops for a second and says, O. J. wants another glass of wine. Rhône. Want me to bring him his wine?

  I’ll take care of it. Fucking guy never buys a decent fucking bottle himself unless somebody else’s paying. Like he expects to get comped his whole fucking life.

  And there’s an asshole over there who wants half a fucking pear.

  At that moment the asshole—the Spanish-looking guy with the bad hair—passes behind the Kid on his way to the men’s room. The Kid realizes he’s been overheard.

  Oh yeah and this gentleman wants the other half!

  The gentleman nods, smiles, and moves on to the men’s room.

  Dario places a hand on the Kid’s shoulder. That “gentleman” is the Nicaraguan consul.

  No shit? The guy with O. J.?

  No shit.

  I thought in Nicaragua everyone was a soccer player or a hooker.

  Dario gives the Kid a cold look. Then he turns his attention back to the lunch reservations. In a low voice he says, You some kinda wiseguy? My wife’s from Nicaragua. You know that. Everybody works here knows that.

  Jeez, Dario, I didn’t even know you were married. What team’d she play for?

  Dario takes a step back and squints at the Kid. Is he serious? Is he putting me on? Is he insulting my wife? Or me? The Kid confuses Dario. He’s confused him since the day he walked in and asked for a job that almost always went to a Honduran or a dry-footed Cuban off the boat or a wet-footed Haitian with phony papers. A normal-looking little white American guy in his twenties with a high school diploma, a type that almost never wants to bus dishes except temporarily as a way to become a waiter. He took the Kid’s application anyhow and ran the usual background check. It turned out the Kid was a listed sex offender on parole and was wearing an electronic ankle bracelet. Dario got the picture. But the Kid didn’t seem mentally retarded and he spoke decent English and a little Spanish so he went ahead and hired him anyhow. He figured because of his record and the risk of being sent back to jail he wasn’t likely to cause trouble or steal anything.

  He called the Kid in and told him he knew about his past. The Kid said it was all a stupid mistake, he was innocent of everything, he was set up. It looked like he was going to break into tears right there in Dario’s office and Dario felt sorry for him which he rarely felt for anyone especially someone he was interviewing for a job. In the past he’d hired ex-cons, recovering alcoholics, and addicts just out of rehab, men and women he knew were illegals with doctored documents and they usually made good dishwashers, pot scrubbers, and busboys at least for a few months or a season until they fell off the wagon or reverted to their old petty criminal habits or got busted by the INS or Homeland Security and deported or locked up. He figured the shadow hanging over the Kid would keep him in line. Which it has.

  But that was ten months ago and the Kid is starting to get on Dario’s nerves. Not for anything he does as much as for what comes out of his mouth. The Kid is a good worker but he’s also a wiseguy. A smart-ass. You never know what he’s going to say or not say. He makes Dario nervous as if the Kid doesn’t give a damn about his job and is periodically tempting Dario to fire him. Thi
s is one of those times, Dario decides. Enough already.

  Kid, put your tray in the kitchen and take off your jacket and go home.

  What?

  You heard me. You’re through. Come by the end of the week for what you’re owed.

  Why are you firing me?

  You got a fucking big mouth. You don’t show respect.

  Dario sniffs his carnation, turns away from the Kid, and walks toward the bar. I gotta get the wife-killer his fucking cheap glass of bar wine. Don’t be here when I get back.

  Okay. I won’t.

  The Kid slowly hefts the loaded tray to his shoulder and heads for the kitchen. To himself since no one’s listening anymore he says, I don’t know where I will be though. I got nowhere left to go.

  CHAPTER NINE

  NOWHERE, EXCEPT BACK TO THE CAMP beneath the Causeway. So he goes there. By the time he steps over the guardrail and cuts down the sharp slope to the concrete island below it’s late afternoon and the camp is shrouded in semidarkness. A few of the rousted residents have returned and are struggling to prop their shanties back up and hanging plastic sheeting over jerry-built frames of PVC tubing and cast-off lumber but otherwise the place is mostly deserted. They too have nowhere else to go. They ignore the Kid and he ignores them. Nothing new—that’s how they usually act. Like they’re covered with shame and are ashamed of each other as well. Him included.

  The camp looks like a small tornado blasted through—clothing and papers and blankets lie scattered in no discernible pattern, shacks and shanties have been turned into piles of rubble, tents have been pulled down and tossed into rumpled heaps of canvas and torn pieces of plastic. The Greek’s generator lies on its side half in the water and half out. A strong shove would dump it permanently into the Bay. The few returning survivors of the raid move slowly and silently in the gloom as if merely trying to make the best temporary use of the wreckage they can but with no evident ambition to restore what they built before the raid when it was practically a village down here, a settlement of men, grim and minimal and squalid but an extension of the city nonetheless as if the city had deliberately colonized this dark corner of itself with its outcasts.