The Hard Bounce - страница 38

Junior and I silently watched him off for a moment. Junior said, “Boo?”

“What’s up?”

“Every goddamn time I hear something like that…” Junior shook his head.

“Yeah.” I felt for Paul, though he seemed pretty well adjusted to his situation. The two of us knew all too well the art of adaptation. Either you made your way within your shitty life or they found you dangling from an extension cord in the janitor’s closet.

As I went to light a smoke, I noticed a tiny smear of Seven’s blood on my finger. I wiped it off on my pants leg.

Junior started Miss Kitty’s engine and gunned it, making her roar. “Now what?”

“Let’s go rent some movies.”

“Ugh. That was terrible, Boo. That was like, Steven Segal script terrible.”

“Just drive.”

Sid’s Vids sat sandwiched between a Vietnamese restaurant and a Store 24 on Commonwealth, right down the block from where the BU campus began. The window facing the street looked like it last met Windex sometime during the Cold War. Sun-faded videotape boxes sat limply on display. I did a double-take.

Videotapes? Even I, the man with the beeper, owned a DVD player. The titles popped up more red flags than a Chinese Army parade.

Caddyshack 2.

Joe vs. the Volcano.

The place didn’t even hawk good videotapes.

Obviously we’d found the right place. The piece of real estate the store occupied didn’t come cheap. And Sid’s Vids wasn’t working too hard to interest customers off the street. The money wasn’t coming off rentals. The only thing missing was a neon sign flashing FRONT. But I must have passed the place a thousand times before and never noticed the quirk of it.

A little bell tinkled over the door as we walked in. The place smelled of stale dirt and something ripe and sickly sweet like old meat. The air conditioner over the window had to be broken; otherwise it should have been turned on by law. Putrid humidity hung the stench at eye-level in the small room. I could hear the sounds of a television and labored breathing coming from the rear. My heart pounded as we walked down the aisle. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if I saw a snake tattoo.

Bad things.

Bad, bad things.

What I did see was one of the fattest beasts outside a zoo that I’d ever laid eyes on. The person sitting behind the counter was at least four hundred pounds. Limp, stringy hair lay across its forehead like overcooked spaghetti.

I was looking right at it, and I had no idea if it was a man or a woman. There were tits, sure, but in the dim light, I couldn’t be sure there wasn’t stubble or an Adam’s apple wedged into the thick folds of its neck.

“Oh, yuck,” Junior muttered under his breath.

I cleared my throat. “Excuse me.”

“What?” The beast still didn’t look up from the TV.

“I want to talk to Sid.”

“I’m Sid,” the beast said, pointing a thumb the size of a bratwurst back at itself.

“You’re Sid?” Junior asked.

“The fucking sign says Sid’s Vids, don’t it? You expecting a man?”

Well, at least we cleared that much up.

“It’s Portuguese,” she went on, “short for Sidonia.”

“We were told we could get some movies here.”

With a tremendous effort, Sid turned her head to look at us better. “Wow. You two managed to figure out that you could get movies at a video store. You two must be the fucking pride of MIT.” Sid laughed a wet gurgle at us.

“Movies with girls in them.”

Sid turned back to the television. “On your left. Through the curtain, Romeo.” To the left was a beaded curtain, a handwritten sign next to it that read, 18 And Over Only.

“I don’t think you’d have these movies on your shelves,” I said.

Sid’s broad face darkened as she turned back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do,” Junior said. “Rough stuff. With girls. And by girls, we mean girls.” Junior plucked a pair of quotation marks in the air with his fingers.

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.” Sid’s voice didn’t have the same conviction the second time. Beads of dull sweat popped out on her face. Might not have been nervous sweat. Could have been exertion sweat from having to turn her head twice in less than an hour.