Nature of the Game

by James Grady

  Don’t, he warned himself. Forget it.

  “Nobody asked you anything, Fatboy,” snapped Harold. He sniffed. “’Cept maybe when you had your last bath.”

  Jud dropped his eyes to his dirty plate. Breathed slowly. In, out. In, out. In. Out.

  “You want some coffee, Harold?” said Nora, standing, moving behind the counter. “I’ll get you some coffee.”

  “How ’bout sugar?” drawled Harold.

  “Your one-cal stuff is on the counter.”

  As Nora stood at the coffee urn, Harold craned his neck so he could stare at her hips. He made sure Fatboy was watching him. Saw the pig body, matted hair, face bent down—and the whites of two eyes. Good, thought Harold. He flicked his gaze back to Nora, wondered if the geek appreciated the way her ass twitched.

  She put the coffee in front of Harold.

  “Hey, Nora,” drawled Harold. “I knows some guys who know some guys in Vegas. Gambling money spills over state lines. I could fix you up with punchboards. The badges around here, they’d understand. They like you. Everybody likes you, Nora.”

  “Stick to wholesaling women’s shoes, Harold,” she told him. “I’ll stick to Carmen’s cooking and my coffee.”

  “Honey, I can’t figure why a sweet woman like you runs a shithole like this.”

  “Guess it’s so guys like you have a place to go.”

  The air conditioner gurgled, clanked; chugged on.

  “So I see,” said Harold, pointedly glaring at Jud.

  “Come on, Harold”—she smiled—“lighten up.”

  “Hard to do around you,” he said. He sipped his coffee. “You could damn near break a man’s heart.”

  “I aim lower,” promised Nora.

  Jud laughed.

  “What the hell you laughing at, Fatboy!” snapped Harold.

  Stop it there, thought Jud, though he wasn’t sure if he was talking to Harold or himself.

  His gun was zipped in a bag on the floor.

  “Somebody wants something out of you,” snapped Harold, “somebody’ll pull your chain.”

  “Harold,” said Nora.

  “We don’t like bums like you around these parts,” said Harold. “Homeless, my ass: bum. I know your kind. If you were any kind of decent man, you could get yourself a home. This is America, asshole. Not a junkyard for losers like you.”

  “You done with your coffee, Harold?” said Nora.

  “Guy like me, I got a home. I got it all. I got me some friends on the Highway Patrol. And I got me a mind to tell ’em there’s a bum loser Fatboy dragging his sorry ass around Highway One Two Seven. A walking sack of litter.”

  You might do that, thought Jud. Burn me to play big man.

  The vision shimmered before him, pure and beautiful.

  “We who are called upon to serve,” he whispered.

  “What did you say?” snapped Harold.

  Jud kept his eyes down as he stood. He sensed Harold stiffen. Jud turned the other way, walked around behind the counter as Nora said, “You should have left long ago, Harold.”

  A gray plastic tub of dirty dishes, glasses, wadded napkins, soggy toast, cups, and soiled silverware sat on a shelf under the counter. Jud picked up the tub, kept his eyes down as he cleared away his dirty dishes.

  “What the hell!” mumbled Harold. Nora frowned. Harold said, “He’s the damn hired help! Dishwasher Fatboy. Nora, don’t you know business? Never let the hired help bug the customers.”

  “You’re no customer of mine,” she said.

  Jud moved to the next dirty setting on the counter. He was four stools from where Harold sat.

  “Honey,” said Harold, “forget him. He’s so gone he ain’t even here. Carmen in back, plugged into her TV set, all that empty road, nobody else but us two: we could have a fine time.”

  “On the road, Harold,” she mumbled, watching Jud.

  “Someday it’s gonna happen.” Certitude and crumbling caution danced on Harold’s face as his eyes ate her. “Nothing you can do about it, so you might as well relax and enjoy it.”

  “I’ll be in my grave first,” Nora snapped.

  Jud wiped the counter with a rag from the tub. The next pile of dirty plates was on the other side of Harold. Jud put the rag back; kept his hand in the full gray plastic container, slid it along the counter. Toward Harold.

  “Oh, hell, Nora!” said Harold, flashing his great teeth his palms flat on the counter. “Where’s your sense of humor?”

  Jud whirled from the plastic tub, stabbed a dirty table fork into the back of Harold’s left hand.

  Harold screamed.

  And Jud leaned his Fatboy weight into the fork, the tongs piercing Harold’s flesh. Harold screamed again, clawed at Jud’s fist with his free hand only to have Jud slap it away. Jud wanted to push into the fork with everything he had, drive it down to China with his chi. Except he couldn’t find his chi and he felt Nora’s eyes on his back; felt her hurry behind the cash register by the door but not reach for the phone on the wall. Jud roared:

  “DON’T! FORK! WITH! ME!”

  “Please! Please! Please!” whimpered Harold. Streams of blood trickled across the back of his hand. Jud eased the pressure, but kept Harold pinned.

  “Please? Pretty please? Pretty please with one-cal sweetener on it?”

  “Yes! Yes! Anything! Anything!”

  “Everything, asshole!” Jud used his gravel laugh. “You fucked with the wrong Fatboy, didn’t you? And you’re jerking her around and she’s my friend. Now you’re forked. Maybe I’ll eat this piece-of-shit hand. Maybe I won’t. But you know what you’ll be thinking if I let you go?”

  “Nothing, honest, mister, I’m sorry, I won’t think, I—”

  “You better think! You better think and remember. You’ll think about your friends on the Highway Patrol. Give ’em a call. Send ’em down here. I’ll give ’em something to run through NCIC. Then they’ll come after you. They got some swell fellas in San Quentin. You’ll all get real tight, honey.”

  “No! No cops! I won’t—” Harold started to cry.

  “You say you know some people who know some people in Vegas.” Jud’s voice dripped bile. He leaned on the fork. Harold paled. Blood trickled to the countertop. “You know Jimmy the Hump?”

  “No,” whispered Harold.

  “You don’t know Jimmy the Hump? Such a big man you are, Harold, and you fuckin’ don’t even know Jimmy the Hump. You’ve heard of him, though, haven’t you Ha-rold?”

  “I … Yeah, sure, everybody—”

  “Everybody who’s somebody knows Jimmy the Hump. But you don’t. Go see the people you know who know people. Send ’em up the line with a message. Tell ’em I said for Jimmy to fork you good!”

  “No, please, don’t tell him! I won’t—I’m sorry!”

  “Sorry?”

  “Sorry!” pleaded Harold.

  Jud pulled the fork free. Harold moaned, cupped his bloody hand to his chest. His white shirt would be ruined. Jud tossed the fork into the tub. Harold couldn’t move his feet.

  “If I let you go,” Jud explained to Harold, “I’ll forget about you. You come back, I—or Nora—gets bothered …” Jud shrugged; graveled his voice: “Jimmy the Hump.”

  “I swear to God!”

  “You got any business with him, Nora?” asked Jud. She stood behind the counter, hands out of sight, away from the phone.

  “Today finished all our business,” she said.

  “Harold?” whispered Jud.

  Harold couldn’t help himself: he leaned close to the monster so he could hear.

  “Fly,” said Jud.

  Stumbling, crashing through the screen door, Harold raced outside. Threw up on the oiled parking lot. Tore away in his Caddy.

  A minute of still silence passed.

  “Sorry,” said Jud. He wiped the blood off the counter, picked up the gray tub, marched it back to its place, rounded the counter, picked up his bags, and headed toward the door; toward the cash register and Nora.


  “I’m really very sorry,” he told her.

  “No, you’re not,” she said.

  “Well …” He shrugged. “At least Harold won’t bother us.”

  “Who’s Jimmy the Hump?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jud.

  Nora blinked. Laughed out loud. So did Jud.

  “God!” she said. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, scream …”

  “Or shoot me,” said Jud, finally figuring her hands, which he couldn’t see beneath the counter.

  “The thought crossed my mind,” she said evenly.

  “No quarrel there,” he said.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  “Just another refugee,” he told her. Sighed. Started out the door, then stopped. His abruptness made her jerk, and he quickly said, “Sorry! I almost forgot to pay you for—”

  “Forget it.” She nodded to the cleared counter. “You worked it off.” Shrugged. “Hell, entertainment.”

  “Thanks,” he said. Started for the door again.

  “Where you going?” she asked, stopping him.

  “Nowhere.”

  “Without a car. In the desert. Got any money?”

  “Haven’t spent much so far.”

  “Haven’t got much to spend, either.”

  “I’m a simple man.”

  “Spare me. Anybody looking for you?”

  He gazed out the windows: a black snake highway through shifting sands, empty blue sky.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “I hope not.” She sighed. “You knew what you were doing—cleaning the counter, I mean. You’ve worked restaurants before.”

  “Not for a couple lifetimes.”

  The air conditioner stuttered; clanked and chugged again.

  “Thing is,” she said, “I don’t have a busboy, janitor. Gas jockey. Somebody good with his hands. And there’s more than one Harold on this damn highway.”

  “That doesn’t worry you,” said Jud.

  “Worry isn’t my way of life,” she said. “You’re trouble. But sometimes … Sometimes trouble isn’t so bad.

  “You got nowhere to go, refugee. I need help. Pay is lousy. You get the trailer out back and all your meals ’cept Sunday dinner. We’re closed then. Carmen makes good eats. You got trouble, keep it to yourself. I don’t even want to know. And you don’t want trouble from me.”

  “Also,” she said, “there’s no bar walking-close. And you’re no good to me when you’re no good at all.”

  “I think I’ve had enough to drink.”

  “That’s today, but I got a nose. I see the shakes.”

  “They’ll pass. I can make that happen.”

  “That’s your load, not mine. We got a deal?”

  Jud again looked out the windows. He ached all over. Out those windows, you could see someone coming a long way off.

  “Sure,” he told her. Set down his bags.

  “Doesn’t work out, you can always hit the road.”

  “Doesn’t work out,” said Jud, “you can always shoot me.”

  Nora smiled.

  “That all you got?” she said, nodding to the gym bags.

  “I travel light.”

  “Don’t deal me cute,” she said, then yelled, “Carmen!”

  Two wide eyes appeared around the edge of the swinging doors: these were not the beautiful people.

  “Enrique got any old clothes to loan …” Nora turned back to her new employee. “What’s your name?”

  “Jud.” He didn’t want to lie to her.

  “Sure,” said Nora. “Got clothes that would fit this guy?”

  “Guy not big enough,” said Carmen. She turned up her nose, but shrugged. Went back to the kitchen; to TV.

  “When do I start?” asked Jud.

  “Now,” she told him. She left the register. Her blouse was out of her waistband. Might have happened in the excitement. Or her blouse might cover a pistol she’d palmed from the till.

  Nora picked up her cup, headed back into the kitchen. Over her shoulder, she told Jud, “Don’t forget the mess outside.”

  WEREWOLF

  The Monday morning after CIA Director Denton’s party dawned gray above Nick Kelley’s blue Victorian house with its black iron fence and more yard than he’d ever wanted to mow. The wind off the Chesapeake Bay some forty miles away was full of the March sea. Nick’s windows rattled as he fed Saul scrambled eggs.

  “Juanita will be here any minute,” said Sylvia as she packed her briefcase with manila files and yellow legal pads.

  The kitchen smelled of coffee, cinnamon rolls. Orange juice. The Washington Post lay scattered on the kitchen metal table. The big black dog waited beneath the baby’s high chair.

  Nick stirred Saul’s fork in the eggs. The baby watched him warily. A Mozart piano concerto played on the radio.

  “Where the hell are my keys?” said Sylvia.

  Saul bobbed toward his mother.

  Nick shoveled a forkful of eggs into his son.

  “Here they are.” Sylvia scooped a massive key chain off the kitchen counter. “Been a snake, they’d’ve bit me.”

  The baby beat his hands on the high-chair shelf.

  “Look,” said Sylvia, “I know you’re worried about Jud.” She sighed. “He’s trouble.”

  “He is that,” said Nick. He let Saul hold the fork.

  “You don’t need that trouble. You don’t want it. Those days are over for you, the longer gone the better.”

  “I know.”

  “I know you want to help him,” she said. “But there’s nothing you can do. Nothing you should do. You owe him nothing.”

  Nick stared at her.

  “We’ve talked about that,” she replied.

  “I know your opinion,” he said.

  “I know what I’m right about. You should take care of us. Of Saul and you and … This isn’t a book you’re writing, it’s us. Our life. Don’t. Just don’t. Okay?”

  Saul pulled the food toward his gaping mouth, but turned the fork upside down before it arrived at its destination. Eggs tumbled down his pajamas. The dog snapped them up before they hit the floor. Saul exploded in laughter.

  “I’m sorry!” she said. “I don’t mean to bitch or second-guess you, but you’re not part of his bullshit. Never have been, never will be.”

  “Technically correct, Counselor,” he told her.

  “But true.”

  “True for a lawyer. But for these people, in that life, there’s more than the law. There’s who I am versus what they think I know and what I might do about that.”

  “But the law’s the bottom line,” argued Sylvia. “You know that. You believe that.”

  “Hola!” called a woman from the front hall. The front door slammed. “Señora! Mi amor!”

  The dog barked and charged from the kitchen. The baby screeched in delight.

  “Hola, Juanita!” yelled Sylvia, her eyes full of her husband and son. “Estamos en la cocina!”

  She spoke quietly. “I know you want to do what’s right, and I love you for it. But I love our life.”

  “Me, too,” said Nick.

  “Remember who you are!” she said. Her eyes were moist.

  “How are you this morning!” said Juanita. The black dog trailed her into the kitchen. “Sorry I am late.”

  “We’re fine,” said Sylvia. “Maybe you could help Nick finish feeding him and—”

  “I’ll do it, honey. I want to.”

  Juanita saw a bridge of ice between husband and wife.

  “I check the laundry,” she said, and hurried to the basement. The dog followed her, paws clicking down the stairs.

  “Nick, it’s been over a week. Deal with the facts, not what you imagine. Nothing’s happened—just another damn phone call in the middle of the night. If it was anything serious, he’d have called back.”

  “If he could.”

  She turned away from her husband’s steady gaze.

  “Don’t go looking for trou
ble,” she said.

  “This time, I didn’t. But I should do something.”

  “There’s nothing you can do,” insisted his wife.

  Saul banged his hands on the tray. His parents looked at him; kept their eyes turned from each other.

  “Which car do you want?” Sylvia asked softly.

  “Doesn’t matter. Take the Jeep, the heater is better.”

  “No, I can take the Ford.”

  Sylvia cuddled and kissed the baby; told Saul to be a good boy. Kissed Nick on the forehead. Left the kitchen.

  Walked back in thirty seconds later as Nick navigated the fork into Saul’s mouth for a successful food dump. She put her head on Nick’s shoulder, her cheek pressed against his face. He smelled the coconut of her shampoo. He draped his free arm around her. Her hand pressed his back and her breath tickled him.

  “Do what you’re supposed to, not what I want. But I love you. You and Saul, I couldn’t go on without—”

  She stopped, kissed his neck. He kissed her lips.

  “Go on,” he said. “Public policy awaits your arrival.”

  Sylvia laughed, left.

  “And don’t worry!” he called out after her.

  Nick worked out of an office on Capitol Hill, a twenty-minute ride from his home. As he drove to work that morning, he wondered if Juanita had kept the classical station on for Saul; smiled and wondered if Saul could hear the differences in music yet.

  He found a parking space two blocks from his office. He turned the collar up on his Navy pea coat, thrust his gloved hands deep in the side pockets. The icy wind was at his back.

  Nothing you can do, he told himself.

  The top-floor town-house apartment he used as an office had high ceilings, a bay window overlooking the street. Nick tossed his coat and gloves on the worn sofa, put coffee water on to boil, and switched on his computer. The screen lit up.

  WHICH FILE FROM MEMORY DO YOU WANT? asked the machine.

  “That’s not where the answers are,” he said aloud.

  The kettle whistled.

  He kept his mind blank while he brewed coffee. The cream in his refrigerator hadn’t spoiled. He took a cup of steaming tan brew back to his desk; stared at the screen, out the window overlooking the tar roofs of Capitol Hill. Across the street, the bare branches of a tree waved in the wind like naked fingers.