by Jim Crace
“What does that imply?” asks Leonard, meaning, What does that imply for AmBush and for me?
“It don’t mean shit, as far as I’m concerned. It’s just a fishin’ trip. They’re trawlin’ through their database, is all, and I’ve popped up. I’m known to them. I’m on the list. No sweat.”
“We going to call it off? They are expecting you. You’ll not get past the police checkpoints.”
“The heck I won’t. This is where the fun begins. They’re lookin’ out for Maximum, but Maximum is goin’ in disguise. That’s what that implies, comrade. That implies we’ve got the edge on them. They only know so much. Now we are advised: what we have here”—he spreads his arms, trying to embrace the pair of them at once—“is two mysterious British Snipers, not on anybody’s list, not yet, one emblematic American in camouflage, and a ticket to the circus each. The president is fucked. He’s gonna get his ears torn off.”
ON THE EVENING BEFORE Laura Bush’s Saturday appearance at the Book Festival, Leonard—hoping to mend fences after what Maxie describes as his tantrum at the Four T’s—offers by way of thanks for their hospitality and for “the fun” that he is having through the day in Maxie’s company to treat them both to a last supper. He wants their reassurances that all is well and will be well. AmBush frightens him.
“Take him to the barbecue,” Nadia suggests. “Leon, have you ever had a Texan barbecue?” He shakes his head. “Then let’s go there. We don’t have to drive out to Coopers or anything. There’s that funny little down-home place right along the street. We can’t let you go back to England a smoked-meat virgin.”
Gruber’s is not busy at this time in the evening. The street outside is still hectic with commuter traffic and with pedestrians. On the sidewalk, exhaust fumes blend with wood smoke. The smell of motor fuel overwhelms the subtler, deeper smells of oak, mesquite, and pecan from the smoldering hardwood coals of the pitmaster’s open fires out back. “These are not exactly boney-fidey,” Maxie explains. “This is just pretend. If you want a full-on Texas barbecue, you’ll have to drive an hour south. Coopers, same as Nadia says. But that”—he points at the racks of kitchen-cooked meat, the sides and carcasses, the slabs of brisket, the bubbling sausages, which have been laid out on the coals for show, Hill Country style—“now that’s authentic meat. There’s no pretendin’ otherwise.”
One of the Gruber boys, working the coals under woodcut signs that promise LOCAL SPOKEN HERE and SERVING AUSTIN’S ORIGINAL HOT SAUSAGE, wipes himself on his apron and shakes hands with all three of them, using only his fingertips. He recognizes Maxie, of course. “So what’ll it be, sir?” he asks, too shy to use Maxie’s name. He points at the ready meat with his serrated slicing knife.
“A bit of everything, man—beef, cabrito, pork.”
“Some Elgin sausage?” Nadia suggests with a passable Texan accent.
“Clearly a vegetable brochette is out of the question,” says Leonard, more primly than intended. He has not expected this display of unforgiving flesh.
“You do eat meat?” asks Maxie. “Get the man a pail of collard greens.”
The Gruber boy stares first at Leonard and then at Maxie, and then at both of them again, his mouth half open, though it’s not clear whether he is in awe of Maxie or is simply taken by a British accent.
“Just joshing you. I’m not a vegetarian as such,” Leonard says. He doesn’t say, I am a hearty carnivore, slaughter me a hog, bring on the raw and bloody steaks. These days, back home, the only meat he eats with any appetite is chicken, and not so much of that. He does not truly believe that Meat Is Murder, as some vegan diehards claim—though certainly it’s slaughter—but he can’t be certain, so he has trained himself to go for fish and vegetables instead, at least when he is eating in company.
It does smell good at Gruber’s, though, he must admit. He is reminded of his mother and her customary Sunday lunches, with the skewered joint of beef or the cracklinged side of pork and the heirloom carving knife at the center of their table. Those meals were wonderful. This might be too. Anyway, he reasons, Maxie and Nadia are his guests, it is his treat, and he will have to go along with it, wonderful or not. Eating beef in Texas is something unavoidable, he supposes. He won’t cause much of a fuss. “Let’s make no bones about it—bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia,” he says, attempting two jokes that no one even smiles at except himself and, finally, the Gruber’s boy, who says, “I seen that movie. It’s way cool.” But Leonard is feeling slightly nauseous already. This is far too real, and surely not hygienic. “Feelin’ peckish, herbivore?” asks Maxie.
Inside, they collect bottled beers and sides of pinto beans and coleslaw with poppy seeds in polystyrene cups, find a trestle table to themselves in a corner, under a pair of mounted buck deer heads, and wait for the staff behind the counter to call their order number or shout Maxie’s name. Leonard does his best to seem at ease, though he is not at ease. Tomorrow worries him. This evening worries him. And Maxie’s herbivore remark has been infuriating. He must stay calm and cool. No tantrums here. No British petulance. To steady himself, he reads the labels on the easy-squeeze bottles of relishes and mustards. He studies the cloudy murk of a one-gallon jar of Ben E. Keith pickles. He peers inside the plastic bags of bread, hoping for wholemeal but finding only extra-thin white. Bread from the fifties, he thinks. Pickles from the devil’s larder. Hell’s kitchen. Constipation, here we come. But says, not quite waggishly enough and causing Nadia to blare her eyes at him, “Man, I could eat a dead bear’s bum.”
Once the barbecue arrives, wrapped in butcher’s paper, Leonard tugs at the unfeasibly large steaks with his fingers for ten or so minutes as everybody else is doing, but all too quickly has had his fill of meat. Rather than sit back puritanically, too soon, while Maxie and Nadia finish off the cuts, he busies himself with the free-with-every-order jalapeños and dill pickles until his eyes begin to smart.
“This is the real real deal,” says Maxie, relishing that perfect Texan trinity of beer and beef and company. “Cowboy style!”—by which he must mean no finesse. Leonard cannot imagine anything less European. Or customers less European. Everyone is either wearing jeans and gimme caps from cattle-feed companies or they’re done up for two-step dancing with cowboy boots and button shirts, doing their best to seem like red-blooded Texans rather than employees of Motorola or UT. It is now that Nadia pulls her camera from her shoulder bag and asks the charmless Gruber girl to take some pictures of the three of them. “Get in the bottles and the meat,” she says. They are the indoor shots, flash bright, that Leonard takes home to Britain. The only evidence that they have met, that he has eaten barbecue. There they are, posing side by side in Gruber’s hot-meat abattoir, in a bygone, unhygienic age. The room is blue with smoke. The archive date is 10-27-06.
JUST CHEWING POLITICS,” he says whenever, in the years ahead, he recounts how this Austin evening finished so badly. “Just talk, that’s all.”
Leonard is relieved when finally Nadia and Maxie retire from the fray, defeated by the size of their order. He’s ready to go home and sleep the evening off. But he will have to wait. The eating may be finished, but the drinking has only just begun. An hour later they are still sitting round the detritus of their meal, with a third and fourth order of beer. Leonard is more than a little drunk—but, in his view, not so drunk as to be talking incautiously. He is not being too specific. He has not mentioned the president by name. He has not referred to the Laura Bush event. He has merely said exactly what he feels about the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, about the torture camps at Guantánamo. Surely that is reasonable.
But Leonard is chewing politics too loudly now and in an accent that clearly is not Texan. He is showing off, of course, wanting to seem lively and stalwart for both Maxie and Nadia, making up for not enjoying meat and for being fearful of the next day’s plans, for being called the herbivore, for being guilty of a tantrum. The Brit is being antsy, as the saying goes. He is looking round the room as if he is a touris
t checking out the artifacts (the rattlesnake skins and diner photographs) in a heritage building staffed by costumed volunteers. He is smiling far too readily. He is making eye contact with strangers, who turn away, or lift their chins at him, or fix him with hard expressions. He leans forward to try to read, out loud, the full text on the T-shirt of an overweight man sitting with his younger wife at the table opposite. It says, “Get Out of Your Rut and Spend Some Time with Us and You Won’t Be Disappointed.” Above is “Bullseye Sportsmans Bar and Grill.” Leonard smiles for the missing apostrophe and catches the wearer’s eye. He grins again, the British protocol. “Nice shirt,” he says. “Get out of your rut, indeed!” But realizing that the closing word is not quite right, too pipingly BBC, he adds, “Indeedy-doo-doowa! That’s jazz.”
“Time to take you home.” Nadia is more uncomfortable than amused.
“Take it easy,” Maxie says, grinning suddenly. “There’s still bottles on the table.”
Three bottles later Leonard stands unsteadily, at Nadia’s prompting, to settle the check, but he diverts off to the restroom first, not only to urinate but also to find some privacy to belch and to wash his hands, rinse away the meat before he handles dollar bills. The men’s room—called Gouchos, although some pedant, some clever frat boy, has already scored out the first o and corrected it with an a—is at the end of a long unlit hall with cinder-block walls. Halfway along, Leonard passes the man with the T-shirt swaying from drink and too wide for the hall. Leonard squeezes to the side as best he can, into the recess of a fire door, but still their shoulders meet. Not a painful clash but an awkward one. Leonard offers his apology.
He is standing and still straining to empty his bladder when the restroom door is opened. Whoever comes in does not step up to the remaining stall at the narrow urinal but waits at Leonard’s back, breathing badly. Leonard does his best to hurry up. But Texan beer is cold and gassy and slow to pass. He turns his head a little and offers a placatory smile, just at the moment when the newcomer reaches forward and shoves him, once, in the middle of his back. He is off-balance anyway. His left hand is holding his open trousers, his shirt front, and his belt away from the urinal; the right hand is directing what remains of his stream. He manages to stay upright but bangs his forehead against the wall in front. The blow is softened only marginally by the decades of chewing gum pressed into the grain of the cinder blocks. Ridiculously, he apologizes again, though how he can have counted it his fault he cannot say. His assailant mutters something. Not an apology, clearly. But more like “Shit” or “Git” or “Shirt.” He shoves Leonard again, this time higher up, in the shoulder, spinning Leonard round. The man steps back, just in time to avoid the final splash, which catches the lower parts of Leonard’s trousers and a shoe. Still, he nods with recognition. It is the T-shirt man again, smiling almost, evidently pleased with what he’s done.
Leonard is not fearful yet; he only feels the victim of a boyish, childish prank. He can almost hear a childhood adversary shouting in his ear, “Leonard’s wet his pants again,” then everybody rushing in to stare and point at him: “Leonard Pissing Lessing! Leonard Pissing Lessing! Get the mop, someone.” This man, though, is saying nothing, just smiling to himself and clenching his fists. Leonard starts to tuck himself away and do up his zipper, his eyes cast down. He knows he ought to speak, make light of it, perhaps. But T-shirt Man is turning now and heading for the hallway.
So it’s like that, thinks Leonard, swiftly sobered. That’s what happens when you bang into a fat man in a hallway, in Texas anyway. You take a shoving. And you take another. And you have to go back to your table and your friends wet around the ankles.
The restroom’s hot-air dryer is not functioning, so Leonard tries to fix himself with toilet paper, but it is the manly, nonabsorbent sort and merely spreads the damp. Fortunately, he now has the Gouchos to himself, and so he has a chance to catch his breath and settle his pounding heart. He’s close to tears and, now that the danger has passed, indulgently angry too. He almost draws blood, biting his lower lip again as he did in the Four T’s. He has to calm himself and get back to the embarrassing safety of the dining room. DAB, Leonard reminds himself. That’s what he’s been taught at music school. When you are waiting in your dressing room with fifteen minutes yet to go before the concert starts and you are shaking like a palsied leaf, then DAB—divert and burn; do something brisk and physical to burn the fear away. Leonard waves his arms around, though that is difficult in such a narrow space. He’d like to kick the restroom door or punch the walls. But he is sensible. Divert, don’t hurt yourself. Indeed, he does feel better almost at once. He pumps his arms to a count of thirty-two and then waits for a moment, more than a moment, washing and drying his hands several times. His hands are shaking anyway, so rubbing them with the thin toilet paper stops the trembling. He counts to sixteen and back again to naught. He’ll give his inexplicably resentful fellow meat-eater time to leave the hallway.
Leonard need not return to the dining room at all. He can easily push through the fire door in the hall and escape directly onto the sidewalk. Wouldn’t that be wisest? Wouldn’t it make sense simply to go back to the apartment alone and at once and let Nadia and Maxie figure it out for themselves? He can say that he was drunk, confused, got lost, misunderstood their plans. Whatever he does, inventing excuses will be easier than facing T-shirt Man again or walking back to the table looking damp and smelling urinous. He’s lost enough face already: the disappointment that Nadia and he will not be partners, the news of her pregnancy, its continuing uncertainty, his timid Englishness, which Texas has made unignorable, the demanding prospects of tomorrow’s AmBush.
The problem is, he has already walked out sulkily on Maxie, at the end of that humiliating performance in the Four T’s. It was a mistake and not one that he should repeat. It wasn’t worth the dime. Besides, he’s said this barbecue will be his treat. If he runs off without picking up the check, they will think he simply doesn’t want to pay his whack. He can guess what Maxie might say. “That British dude is tighter than tree bark. Won’t help us out with, you know, doctor’s fees. Won’t even pay for supper. What do we get for our fine hospitality? A carton of orange juice, is all.”
No, Leonard must face the music, so to speak, and go back to the dining room. He splashes his face with cold water, washing away the taste of meat and lip blood and the sting of pickle. He listens carefully. No sounds close by, just water, distant traffic, and music from the bar next door, a thrashing bass. A deep breath, then, and he will push the restroom door back. He gives it a solid shove, but the door will not open entirely. It sticks halfway. He puts his shoulder up against it and tries again, too soon to realize that what he thought was the toilet cistern refilling is in fact his old assailant’s wheezing lungs. The man’s been waiting—and evidently smoking—in the hallway behind the restroom door. Now he’s even less amused, and has as his excuse the pair of knocks he’s taken from the door handle and the sudden loss of his half-burned cigarette. “Sorry,” Leonard says for the third time, closing the Gouchos door behind him. He says nothing else. His chin is punched, a heavy rising blow, his head banged back against the cinder-block wall with a porous thud. He bites his tongue. Another blow. His nose this time. Another blow.
The punches do not hurt exactly, but they are shocking, shockingly efficient, as if a chiropractor rather than a boxer has carried out some restorative procedure on his face. He’s been straightened out. His skeleton is realigned. Even the impact of his skull on the wall seems soft at first. But, so soon after washing away the taste of meat, Leonard’s mouth is full of blood again, not cooked, not smoked, but fresh and privately familiar. Now T-shirt’s fingers are wrapped round Leonard’s throat and he is hurting, finally. His feet are barely touching the ground. All his weight seems to be hanging from the man’s thick arms. His face is turned against the cold cinder blocks. He feels as weak and helpless as an overcoat being hung up on a hook.
T-shirt is muttering under his breath.
Leonard makes out the word Brit, repeated as a curse. “Look,” he says, as best he can, given that his windpipe is so constricted. He means to offer more apologies, an explanation, some recompense perhaps. That seems urgently wise. “I’m sorry if—” His assailant unexpectedly backs away, goes limp in fact, releases his throat hold so that Leonard drops onto his knees and is staring into the man’s rodeo belt and gut. T-shirt hovers for a moment, halves in height, his eye whites, now level with Leonard’s own eyes again, suddenly visible in the low light of the corridor, and then he falls forward onto Leonard’s shoulder, a sudden penitent, exhaling like a punctured cushion.
“Jesus,” Leonard says, flattened almost, fearing/hoping that the man has had a heart attack, a stroke. He’s fat enough. Evidently from the stink of his breath and his fingers he is a heavy smoker too. Leonard is already beset with awkward possibilities. What should he do? What should he tell the monster’s wife? Who’ll take the blame? “Jesus Christ,” he says again, and starts to push against the leaden body pressing down on him.
“Jesus won’t help you,” someone says. T-shirt Man is rolled aside. Leonard is being pulled by his wrist. He does not recognize his savior straightaway. Then he sees the hair. It’s Maxie. Maxim Lermontov. He has blood on the knuckles of his right hand and a short gray-and-black handgun in his left. “So get up off your knees,” he says.
HE WAS GONNA KICK YOUR ASS.” Maxie is sitting at the window with a tablecloth round his shoulders while Nadia combs out his hair, pushing back the long, loose strands from his forehead, reluctant to begin the conscript cut for his disguise.
“You don’t know that.” Leonard is still angry and embarrassed, but Maxie does not seem to understand his discomfort. “You had a gun. I saw it in your hand.”
“That’s the best place for a gun.”
“Where the hell did that come from?”