PIGGS - A Novel with Bonus Screenplay (3 page)

T
he way the deal worked, Ortega was the waiter at Wan's, and a cook sometimes if Ahmed got high and couldn't find his head. Ortega waited tables, and hauled dishes back from out front or across the way at Piggs.
 
The dishes and the pots wound up in Jack's sink.

The washing wasn't bad, Jack didn't mind that.
 
The other part was what he didn't like.
 
Cecil didn't care if the dishes got clean.
 
Food Reclamation, that was Cecil's thing.
 
A guy leaves half an eggroll, toss out the fried part, save the inside.
 
Save all the rice except the part soaks up a little sauce.
 
Save all the meat because meat costs a lot–even though Cecil buys cuts Tex Savallo couldn't give away to anybody else.

Rhino ran Wan Lee's for Cecil, and Rhino kept his eye on Ahmed, Ortega and Jack.
 
If he didn't, Ortega and Ahmed would steal the place blind.
 
Jack wouldn't steal, but Jack dumped scraps down the sink.
 
Cecil wouldn't stand for that.
 
Rhino thought Cecil was nuts.
 
He was also plain terrified, and he did what Cecil said.

Jack couldn't stand the floaters.
 
Floaters made him sick.
 
A little Hunan bobs up, Jack's sure he's got to barf.
 
It wasn't like that, before he went down for five to ten.
 
He only did three, but that was enough to do him in.
 
Huntsville soured him inside and out.
 
Now he had irritated bowel syndrome and gastro- this and that.
 
He used to eat chili and barbecue and pizza twice a week.
 
Now white rice was a culinary treat.
 
Jack looked in the mirror sometimes, certain his eyes were slanting up at both ends.
 
He dreamed about salsa and
Habenero
peppers, and woke up sweating with a fire in his belly that he couldn't put out.
 
Sometimes, early in the morning, the dreams got better than that. Sometimes he was back in Oke City, driving down Western in a Park Avenue, some babe on the leather there beside him, a babe with legs up to here. Her name escaped him now, he'd never been any good at that.

Rhino came through the swinging doors and said, "Couple garlic shrimp, lemon chicken, egg rolls, hot and sour soup.
 
No scraps or nothing, this is for Cecil, this ain't for out front."

"Is okay I spit in somet'in," Ahmed said, "you got a problem wi' dat?"

"No it ain't okay, raghead, it's okay with me you fuckin' die, that's what's okay with me.
 
Jack, you take it over.
 
Don't goof around, get it there hot."

Jack blinked.
 
"I got dishes.
 
I got stuff to do here."

"Uh-huh.
 
Now you got stuff to do there."

"I don't want to, man."

"You don't wanta, you don't wanta what?"

"I don't want to.
 
Let Ortega go."

Rhino closed one eye.
 
The eye disappeared in fat.

"Ortega's the waiter, Ahmed's the cook, I'm the fuckin' maitre d'.
 
You're what I tell you to be, you got any problem with that?"

"Hey, I don't want to, man."

Ahmed snickered.
 
A snicker, not a laugh.
 
A snicker and a leer he'd brought over from Iraq.

Rhino gave him a look.
 
Turned back to Jack.
 
"Take the stuff over.
 
Don't mess around, get your ass back."

Rhino disappeared.
 
Ahmed tossed a handful of shrimp in the wok.
 
The wok hissed and sizzled in a cloud of peanut oil.
 
Ahmed wore a turban that used to be white.
 
Sweat squeezed under and wandered down his brow.
 
Hid in his beard, then dropped in the wok.

"Hey, Cecil like you a lot," Ahmed said, "you a pretty locky guy, you know dat?
 
What I t'ink, Jhack, I t'ink Cecil he got hees eye on you.
 
I t'ink you in line for a very big jhob roun' here..."

Ahmed couldn't finish.
 
His shoulders shook, and his cheeks exploded like a runaway balloon.

Jack wanted to jump the little shit, break a rib or two.
 
Ahmed was five-two, eighty-eight wet.
 
What he'd like to do, he'd like to ram Ahmed's head down in the wok.
 
Hold him there till it got a good crust, till you couldn't tell Ahmed from the shrimp. He used to hand out a lot of hurt, liked to knock a guy around.
 
But he wasn't two-ten anymore, he was one-fifty-five.
 
His gut was screwed up and it hurt too much to hurt anybody else.

"He sees me, he'll clobber me or something," Jack said.

"He don't like me going over there, he likes me stayin' here.
 
Fuck, Rhino knows that.
 
He's going to get me killed, that's what he's gonna to do."

"I t'ink you very wrong about Cecil," Ahmed said.
 
"Cecil like you, Jhack."
 
He blew a wet kiss in the air. "He maybe goin' to give you a ring, sometin' like dat."

"All you got, you got this one fucking act," Jack said. "Why don't you take a day off, try and work up something else."

Ahmed rolled his eyes, like he'd seen Arabs do on TV.
 
Whipped a herd of shrimp around the wok, gave them a squirt of chili oil.
 
Slid them on a plate.
 
Started all over.
 
Cooked a batch of chicken.
 
Gave everyone a scoop of pasty rice, egg rolls he'd never used at all.

"Here you go, man.
 
Lemon chick'n, garlic shrim'. What you t'ink Cecil having, hah?
 
I am guessin' shrim'.
 
Gotta be de shrimp, man.
 
I can't spit on everyti'ng at once."

T
he throughway from Wan's to the back door of Piggs was an open alleyway.
 
Wan's walls were brick, painted whorehouse red.
 
Piggs' walls were corrugated tin.
 
In between the two was a Dumpster full of smells.
 
Smells from the Orient, smells from the West.
 
Chinese cabbage, onions and shrimp.
 
Beer, whiskey, and petrified chips.
 
Jack could hardly stand the smells fresh, he couldn't tolerate them dead.

The stench was stupefying in the dreadful heat of day.
 
The smells didn't go away at night.
 
At 11:22, the temperature in Mexican Wells was just under ninety-eight.

Jack knew how to hold his breath, Jack could hold his breath for some time.
 
He had held it for three whole years in the Huntsville pen.
 
Held it in the cells, in the crowded corridors, held it in the john.
 
Never took a breath in the big mess hall.
 
A little sniff there would make him sicker than a dog.

He thought about Ahmed.
 
He wished he had the nerve to do something bad to Cecil's plate.
 
Jack hated Ahmed, but Ahmed had guts, you had to give him that.
 
Ahmed had grown up in the desert.
 
He'd shown Jack where on a map.
 
All he had to eat was ants, Ahmed said, he didn't have any shoes or socks.
 
No wonder he wasn't scared of anything at all.

Jack stopped, halfway through the alleyway.
 
He heard this sound, like a pipe had maybe broken, like someone had left a faucet on.
 
He looked to his right and saw it wasn't that at all. Some asshole was standing in the dark, pissing on the wall.

"Hey, cut that out," Jack said, "goddamnit, we got rest rooms for that."

The guy kept pissing, he didn't look at Jack.
 
Jesus, Jack thought, he must've been in Piggs all night.

"I'm not telling you again, just stop it right now.
 
I can send people out here, you know."

"Fhugga you..." the guy said in the dark.

"Okay, that's it.
 
You've had it, pal–"

With that, Jack forgot what he was doing, forgot he was talking, and took a deep breath.
 
Kung Po chicken, Szechuan pork, Margaritas past their prime.
 
Jack bolted for the door, shut it behind him, sucked in a breath, grateful for the stale and smoky air of Piggs.

Light assailed his senses, music blasted from the worn-out speakers on the wall.
 
On the main center stage, a very tall and naked girl writhed in an agony of need, squirmed in a fever of unrequited lust.
 
The message, from the fire in her eyes, from her damp and parted lips, said all she really wanted was a night of sweaty love.
 
Love with a loser, love with a bald guy dreaming of her crotch.
 
Plumbers in workpants, lawyers in suits, adenoidal boys.
 
Guys who drove Jaguars, guys who drove Fords.

Jack, though, knew they didn't have a chance.
 
The girl in the hot pink light was Gloria Mundi, the loveliest woman Jack had ever seen, ever imagined in his dreams.
 
A woman, Jack knew, from personal encounters with Gloria herself, who possessed an inner beauty that even surpassed the outer part.

Jack was next to certain they would marry in the spring.
 
Or possibly the summer, or maybe in the fall.
 
Or, if not, possibly after that.

"T
ake it back," Cecil said, "get it out of here."

"Do what?" Jack said.

"Take it back, I don't want the fucking shrimp."

"You don't want it."

"You heard him," Grape said, "He says he don't want it, you listening or what?"

"Okay," Jack said.

"Okay, what?"

"Okay I'll take it back."

"That's terrific," Grape said, "I'm glad to hear it, Jack.
 
Mr. Dupree'll be glad you can handle this for him, he appreciates that."

Cecil had forgotten he was there.
 
He was off somewhere, his mind on something else.
 
Jack picked up his plate.
 
Left the other shrimp for Grape.
 
Set the lemon chicken in front of a man he'd never seen before.
 
When he set the plate down, he spotted Alabama Straight.
 
Alabama was busy down in the guy's lap.

"This any good?" the guy said.

"Yes sir, it is," Jack said.

The man speared a piece of chicken and sniffed.
 
Jack saw he wore a tie.
 
His shirt was blue but his collar was white.
 
He wondered if the collar came off.
 
They did that in Westerns sometimes, he didn't know they did it now.

Jack felt a little itch, turned and looked behind his back. Grape was where he always was, but the Cat wasn't there.
 
He didn't miss Cat Eye, Cat wasn't anyone you'd miss.
 
Still, if you knew where he was, you wouldn't be thinking he'd jump out at you, scare you half to death.

The girl came up for air.
 
The guy in the tie ate his hot and sour soup.
 
Jack got Cecil's tray and took off.

Cecil said, "Jacko, where you going with that?"

Jack stopped.
 
Cecil was looking in his beer, he didn't look at Jack.

"Taking stuff back," Jack said. "You said take it back."

"I didn't tell you take it back."

Jack took a deep breath.
 
"See I thought you did.
 
I thought you didn't want the shrimp."

"You are mistaken, Jacko, I didn't say that."

"Mr. Dupree, he just told you," Grape said. "Why you want to aggravate the man?"

"No, sir.
 
I wouldn't do that."

"Then put it down," Cecil said, "you think you can manage that?"

"I'll leave it right here," Jack said, "I'll just put 'er right down."

He set the plate down, backed off fast, felt his gut tighten up again.
 
Wondered why he was too slow to get it, too slow to see it coming every time.

"I think you might have a hearing loss," Cecil said.
 
"You might want to see about that."

"I think that's what he's got," Grape said.

"It seems to me he does."

"You go up to Austin," Grape said, "they got a good man up there.
 
Minnie got a thing put in; you can't even see it in her ear."

"You go and do it," Cecil said.
 
"Get something in your ear."