A Permanent Member of the Family (17 page)
Read A Permanent Member of the Family Online
Authors: Russell Banks
“Thanks,” I say.
When I start to move away, he says, “Kill anybody lately?”
“The fuck you going with that? Why'd you ask me that?”
“Hey, man, I'm sorry! I am really very sorry! Remember I told you sometimes I can't help what I say out loud? It's like I don't even know I'm saying it and peoples can hear it, and then they get all weirded out and upset. I'm really sorry, man.”
“Forget it,” I say. “I guess we all say and do shit we don't mean.”
I step away and go to work making his martini. I bring it to him and shake it down and pour.
“There's some peoples who don't say and do shit that they mean,” he says.
“Yeah? Like who?”
“Like that fucking cracker who was here last time, the dude in the bow tie who wanted to go to the Green Door. Remember him, man?”
“What did he not say?”
“That he was a fucking white racist, man. He didn't say that, right? He didn't have to.”
“What did he not do?”
“You know the answer to that, man.”
“I guess so. But tell me.”
“He wanted to fuck a fat Polynesian boy.”
“He coulda got what he wanted at the Green Door.”
“Nah. He passed out in his car in the parking lot. That dude, man, he never made it to the Green Door,” he says, laughing. He lifts his glass and takes the first sip. As the ice-cold vodka hits his brain, he cuts me a smile like he knows everything there is to know about me and says, “And you, you never killed nobody, man.”
RUSSELL BANKS
is one of America's most prestigious fiction writers, a past president of the International Parliament of Writers, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into twenty languages and has received numerous prizes and awards, including the Common Wealth Award for Literature. He lives in upstate New York and Miami, Florida.
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FICTION
The Relation of My Imprisonment
The New World
Searching for Survivors
Â
NONFICTION
Dreaming Up America
The Invisible Stranger
(
with Arturo Patten
)
A PERMANENT MEMBER OF THE FAMILY
. Copyright © 2013 by Russell Banks. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
ISBN 978-0-06-185765-2
EPub Edition NOVEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9780062096746
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