Charles D'Ambrosio - The Dead Fish Museum

“Pecker?” Rigo said.

“Like dong, dink, dick,” RB said. He spread his legs and pointed at his crotch. “Penis.”

Rigo allowed a thin smile of recognition.

“Little guy doesn’t know where he’s at,” RB said. He fingered a scar that cut across the base of his throat. The original wound had been stitched together without much concern for cosmetics; against his oily black skin, the tissue was red and smooth and protuberant, like a worm. “We watched fuck-flicks all the time in reform school.”

“You were in reform school?” Ramage asked.

“You don’t believe me?”

“You’ve never mentioned it before. How’d you end up there?”

“I got crossed by a guy I sold some chain saws to.”

“Seems to me they wouldn’t allow porn.”

“Shit,” RB said. “Everything was allowed.”

“You finish taping?”

“No.”

“I guess you got that disease again.”

“What disease?”

“That sit-around-on-your-ass disease.”

“Oh, you’re kidding. I get it.”

“I’m not kidding, RB. You hardly did jack today.”

“Ah, Spooky.”

“Why are you calling me Spooky?”

RB looked at Ramage, then shrugged. “That cartoon,” he said. He turned to Rigo and shouted, “Hey Rigoberto, take a break. Stop. No paint.”

“He’s not deaf,” Ramage said.

“He sure don’t understand.” RB beat on the floor with his fist. “Rigoberto, here, sit. Sit. Sit down. Down, man.”

Rigo grabbed a wrinkled brown lunch sack he’d stashed behind a stack of Sheetrock. The sack had been folded and saved and used repeatedly. His clothes showed the same habitual thrift. He wore neatly creased khakis and a crimson T-shirt, the HARVARD nearly washed away.

“You ever killed a man?” RB said.

Rigo scraped flecks of red paint from his arm and didn’t answer.

“Me, I don’t have the heart to kill a man. You got to have heart to kill somebody.”

Using his thumb Rigo made an inconspicuous sign of the cross on his knee and silently said grace and then made the same small cross again before unwrapping the waxed paper from his sandwich.

“That must be some good-ass sandwich,” RB said. “I hope it is. I sure hope to fucking God it’s not baloney again.”

Rigo lifted a corner of the sandwich.

“More baloney!” RB screamed, grabbing Rigo’s sack and sandwich. “Jesus Christ, I swear, you’re just like all them refugees.” Then, as if they were co-conspirators, he said to Ramage, “See how it works, they all get together and send a man over, and he gets his shit together, eatin’ baloney every damn day and savin’ up his money. Never go to a movie or buy ice cream or nothing. Just baloney and baloney and more baloney. Then he sends back money so the whole family can book out of Pago Pago and come over and they all live together, nine of them to one room, everybody eatin’ baloney every minute!” RB lobbed the lunch sack out the window and, his tone lowered and confidential, addressed Rigo again. “America’s so wide open, see, with you people coming here, I call you refugees.”

“America’s so wide open,” Ramage said, “it seems to have filled up with shitheads. Go get his sack.”

“Spooky, man, you can’t have a grown man praying for baloney. Not in America! It ain’t right, I’m sorry. Now Harvard, quit praying for that shit.”

“Go get it.”

“Every job we do,” RB said, “every week, he eats five days of straight baloney. Not even fried! Give the baloney a break, Harvard. You understand? FUCK. THE. BALONEY.”

Rigo was gazing into the inscrutable square of black sky, out the empty window where his baloney sandwich had flown.

RB clattered down the fire escape and came back a minute later.

“The baloney got a little dirty,” he said. He reached for his billfold. “Buy yourself something good to eat, Harvard. My treat. Something special. Get yourself a cheeseburger.”

Greenfield looked about the warehouse, making no mention of the work that had been completed; it was as if the merest kindness might collapse the hierarchy. He stared up at the ceiling, inspecting a large skylight.

“I like that,” Greenfield said. “I might use that.”

Greenfield moved directly under the skylight, where a waning moon was visible like an amulet in the bottom of a black velvet box.

“I might quote Citizen Kane, ” he said. “What do you think? We’ll crane up over the warehouse and drop down through the skylight.” He lit a long red Sherman. It moved obscenely like the tongue of a lizard between his lips. “What do you think of that? Huh?” He was asking RB. “Quoting Citizen Kane ? What’s your opinion?”

RB shrugged. “Whatever gets you off.”

Ramage said, “You don’t have a crane.”

“So?” Greenfield said.

“So you need a crane to quote Citizen Kane. ”

“I’ll call the movie ‘Citizen Cunt,’ ” Greenfield said. He pointed to Rigo and said, “You like that? Would you buy a movie with that title?”

“Certainly,” he said.

“The title’s important,” Greenfield said. “The title’s everything.”

Ramage felt a tightening at his temples. Impatient, he asked, “You got any more work for us?”

“Finish painting,” Greenfield said. “I want that black room glossy, like a mirror. Rub some polish on the paint after it dries. Buff it out so we can see our reflections.”

RB spoke up. “Greenwad, how about putting me in the movie?”

“It’s not as easy as it looks,” Greenfield said.

“I can handle it,” RB said. “I popped my first cherry when I was eleven, just a little spike.”

“Bullshit,” Ramage said.

“Ask my sister if you don’t believe me.”

Greenfield looked him over. “You endowed?”

“Shit,” RB said, reaching for his belt buckle.

“Please,” Greenfield said. He made his face into a face expressive of distaste. He looked at RB again and said, “Although, it might be a kick.”

The carpentry job was straightforward: build three boxes, paint them in three colors — one red, one black, one white. With the paint still drying, Ramage had Rigo and RB help him arrange a few pieces of rented furniture — chairs, tables, lamps — and now, nearly finished, they all sat down in one of the rooms they’d built, on the bed. RB propped a pillow beneath his head and leaned back. Ramage felt RB’s cool, moist skin rub against his; he inched away from the contact.

Rigo opened a beer and lofted the bottle above his head; it shone like a torch, golden in the dim light, as bubbles streamed to the surface. The outside world might have vanished, the warehouse was so suddenly quiet.

“You might be part nigger,” RB said to Rigo.

Rigo sipped his beer; his face was freckled with paint.

“Spooky, don’t he look like a nigger?”

RB’s initials stood for nothing. “Just RB,” he’d explained, when Ramage asked about his name, “straight up southern.”

“Drink your beer,” Ramage said.

“Look at his nappy head,” RB continued. “Nigger hair. Me and Rigo could be brothers.”

“I am Salvadoran,” Rigo said, a little cold, prideful.

“Used to be, but now you in the U.S. of A., Jack.”

“Drink,” Ramage said.

RB drank, then asked, “When they start shooting?”

“Call’s for seven tomorrow morning,” Ramage said.

“You’re all invited to my debut,” RB said. “Those ladies are fine. They know all sorts a special tricks, too. You get with one of them, you’ll be spoiled for life. I had this one old girlfriend that used to call me the wonder-log.”

“Referring to what?”

“Hell, Spooky—”

“Why do you keep calling me Spooky?”