Russell Banks - Rule of the Bone

This one night they were more stoned than usual, really choked and there were a couple of decent females that Bruce and Joker had picked up at Purdy’s over in Keene which is a respectable bar, not a biker place and to impress them the guys had started doing multiple tequila shots and beer and Roundhouse had put this old truly raucous Pearl Jam tape on Russ’s box and started slam-dancing. I guess it was the only way he could figure out how to make the females notice him. He got pretty wild, all that hair and fat leaping and bouncing and pounding against the floor and then when the females seemed to like it and think it was funny the other guys joined in and pretty soon they were all slamming each other while the females watched.

The females definitely weren’t skags but they weren’t anything special either. Not babes. They had their own car and were in their thirties, my mom’s age practically and thick in the middle and big-assed like her but they thought I was real cute. The one who said she liked my mohawk was named Christie and had on a Fuck You I’m From Texas tee shirt and no bra so you could see her nipples which was cool and the other whose name was Clarissa had on this tee shirt that said My Next Husband Will Be Normal but she right away put on Bruce’s leather jacket so I didn’t have a chance to see if she had a bra on. Bruce’s nipples you could see though since as usual he wasn’t wearing any shirt and also his little gold nipple rings which always made me nervous but if you didn’t look at them especially if you’re short like me you had to look at his shaved stomach and chest and tattoos too so you tried not to look at him at all, which I didn’t. But then he always goes, What’s your fucking problem, Chappie, you got a problem? You oughta look at me when I’m fucking talking to you, Chappie.

So I go, Hey, no fucking problem, man, and stare into his eyes which are blue and cold like Joker’s but handsome and then he smiles down like he’s triumphed over a major adversary even though if he wanted he could squash me like a flea.

The music was really loud, Pearl Jam is grunge but they play loud even when the volume is turned down and the men of Adirondack Iron had it cranked and I was starting to worry that the floor would cave in from the slam-dancing when suddenly I turn around and Russ is coming through the door behind me looking seriously pissed.

Shut the fuck up! he yells. The Old Lady’s downstairs and she’s ripshit!

The Old Lady was Wanda LaGrande wife of Rudy who owned the building and the Video Den and rented out the rest although except for our squat the rest was permanently vacant because of the decrepit condition of the building and I suppose the presence of Adirondack Iron. Plus the neighborhood was not the best.

Bruce stops slamming and comes over and puts his huge sweaty arm around Russ’s skinny shoulders and says, What’s the matter, little man? It’s a party, man. It’s a fucking party. Just chill, okay?

Russ pulls away from the arm and goes, The Old Lady’s downstairs hitting on me for the rent and she’s talking eviction again unless I come up with some money and you guys are making up her mind for her. I’m serious, man, I need some money from you guys, he said.

Bruce smiles like he does and reaches down and picks up Russ like he’s a stuffed animal he won at the fair and kisses him on the nose. Still smiling he says, Fuck you, little man, and then he leaps back into the pack of slam-dancers sending them flying off his meaty shoulders against the walls and furniture. Clarissa, the one wearing Bruce’s jacket was sitting in a corner with a can of Genny in her hand and she waves at me and pats the floor next to her for me to come over. She was definitely starting to look less like my mom and more like a babe.

But then Russ says to me, C’mon downstairs, man. Wanda gets off on you, maybe she’ll lighten up and think of something else if you’re there.

I think yeah why not, it’s my squat too and I need to take some of the responsibilities once in a while, so together we go down the rickety outside staircase to the Video Den. Wanda liked to pretend that she managed the Video Den for her husband but mainly she was this dotty old lady married to a drunk who sent her out sometimes to collect the day’s cash from the till and whatever rent money she could scrounge out of Russ and buy booze with it. I think they’d both been married a couple of times before and were together now more or less out of convenience. Luckily she had a weakness for talking about colon cancer on account of her father and several brothers and ex-husbands had died from it and usually Russ could get her talking about colon cancer a mile a minute until she forgot about collecting the rent and sometimes she even forgot to empty the till, which made it easier for Russ to skim a few bucks before making the light deposit and afterwards he could say she had taken it herself when she came in earlier.

People like Wanda and Rudy LaGrande on account of being drunk for half a century have very short and unreliable memories you might say and if you don’t piss them off too much you can easily victimize them. Russ was into that. Although I myself was not and in fact I kind of liked her cancer stories. She always started in the beginning when her father or brother or whoever was healthy and unsuspecting and ended with all the disgusting details of his painful long-drawn-out death which was cool. The idea was you were supposed to be glad you didn’t have colon cancer yourself and for me it worked. Afterwards I was always real glad I didn’t have it and that made her happy.

This one night though Wanda happened to be unusually irritated with the world and was not distractable by anyone’s apparent interest in colon cancer, even mine. It was cold out, close to zero and her husband Rudy’s driving her into the night for money and more booze before the liquor stores closed had given her a crossed hair so to get even she’d been making all kinds of upper-level Video Den management moves and giving Russ a general hard time. Also the noise from upstairs must’ve reminded her that the rent was two whole months late. Which was why Russ’d come up to try and get the guys to chill.

But when we come through the door Wanda’s standing behind the counter with the empty register drawer open in front of her and the first thing she does when she sees us is throw Russ’s shearling jacket at him. It was mine actually, from my mom but I had sold it to Russ for twenty-five bucks to invest in half a bag of skunk on condition I could buy it back when I dealt the weed which I hadn’t yet. Russ meanwhile’d been loaning me his old jean jacket.

She goes, Russell, you’re a thief! Look here! Look! There is not a single cent in here! Not one penny!

Wanda’s a small woman, round and energetic like a chickadee with frizzled black-dyed hair and heavy makeup that she puts on crooked and she always dresses like she’s got a date with a traveling salesman, which is a sign I guess that she once had a good social life. She says to Russ, I happen to know for a fact that Pretty Woman was returned today and should have been paid for and also several more that were out when I went looking for them yesterday and the day before. Give me your key to the store, Russell, just turn it over now. As of this moment you’re fired.

She was right, he had been stealing. Plus I knew Russ hadn’t legally rented any videos that day or collected for any that were returned although he had loaned quite a few to his friends as he often did in exchange for a tray or even a roach sometimes or to impress girls. And Pretty Woman was one of those sensitive true-love movies that make girls hot so he’d kept it freely circulating among them ever since it first came out.