Geezer snaps the rubber band off the cash.

--It's too much, right? I know it's too much. Don't go spastic because it's too much, Loller.

He pats the bag.

--This is good stuff. These kids, they might be good little thieves. I want to overpay a little, give them a little career encouragement. You take your twenty percent and forget ripping off whatever you were going to rip off. I want them to like me. Right?

--Hey, I wasn't gonna rip anybody.

--Really, who gives a f.u.c.k? Just don't do it. OK?

--Yeah, but I wasn't even thinking.

--Jeff, I'm not gonna apologize for saying the truth. Drop it.

--OK. OK.

--Two hundred?

--Yeah. Of course, man.

Geezer grunts and holds out the empty juice gla.s.s. Jeff takes it and puts it on the coffee table next to the lily pad shaped ashtray with the ceramic frogs waiting to hold a cigarette for you. Geezer licks his thumb and starts peeling twenties from the roll.

--Here we go. Come and get it.

Jeff takes the money and puts it in his pocket.

Geezer shoves his bankroll back in the couch.

--And see if maybe they want to do something for me.

--Like what?

--Steal some more s.h.i.t. I know a place. Here, let me write this down.

--Sure, but I should split. Gotta get to work.

Geezer uses the grabber to pluck a notebook from the coffee table, brings it to his lap and scribbles, pa.s.ses Jeff a sc.r.a.p of paper clutched in the claw.

--Split. Have fun.

Jeff turns the k.n.o.b, starts to open the door.

--And, Jeff?

Jeff stops.

--Yeah?

Geezer leans forward.

--You know where a guy would get a stapler? A big one?

[image]

Paul comes back into the trailer and finds Andy sprawled on the floor.

George is leaning Jeff's cabinet speakers together to form an A frame above Andy's face.

He looks at Paul.

--What'd you have to talk to him about?

Paul squats next to Hector, looking through Jeff's alb.u.ms, looking for the perfect one.

--Seein' if the truck needed a push to get started.

Hector pulls Van Halen Van Halen from the stack.

Paul shakes his head and pulls out Number of the Beast.

Hector rolls his eyes.

--s.h.i.t may as well be pop.

--f.u.c.k you, Maiden rocks.

--Rocks your grandma.

George leans between them.

--I don't know what you guys are f.u.c.king around for. There's only one way to do this.

He grabs an alb.u.m and slides it from its sleeve.

Hector stands up.

--All this s.h.i.t is tired anyway. It's like Day on the Green Greatest Hits or some s.h.i.t.

George puts the alb.u.m on the turntable.

--f.u.c.k you, you like going to Day on the Green as much as anyone.

--I like going and getting f.u.c.ked up and checking out the chicks, but the music is dinosaur rock. Beat and tired.

Paul puts an elbow in his ribs and heads for the fridge.

--Metallica is not beat.

Hector jumps on his back.

--One decent f.u.c.king band! A whole day of tired music and one decent headbanger in the whole lineup.

Paul crashes into the sink and falls to the floor with Hector clinging to him, the two of them wrestling on the linoleum.

--You're dead, f.a.g.

He goes after Hector's hair, Hector slapping at his hands.

--Not the hawk, not the hawk, man! That's not cool!

Paul is rubbing his hand over Hector's head, demolishing the hawk.

--Gonna scalp you this time. You wanna look like a injun, you can die like one.

George turns away from the spectacle and kneels next to his brother and offers him a chromium blue sneak a toke made out of spun aluminum.

--Here.

Andy takes the bomb shaped pipe and sucks a hit out of it and hands it back to his brother.

--Thanks.

George turns to look in the kitchen as the garbage can is kicked over and empty beer cans spray across the floor.

He looks at the pipe in his hand and then at his genius brother.

--What the f.u.c.k are you doing here, Andy?

Andy is staring up into the angle where the speakers meet, thinking about Pythagoras. The sum of the three angles will be equal to two right angles. That's a fact. He focuses on trying to generate an accurate measurement of the angles by applying his estimations to the formula.

He has cottonmouth and sucks the back of his tongue to try and create some moisture.

--Hangin'. You want me to leave?

--No, man, I just. I mean, why aren't you doing something else?

George blows smoke at his two best friends rolling around in the mess of cans and cigarette b.u.t.ts and fast food bags.

--We got nothing better to do. You could be doing s.h.i.t. You could be studying for the SAT. You could be working on science fair s.h.i.t. You could be making one of your dungeons. Something, you know, creative or something.

Andy's looking for the trap. Is George being serious? If he answers him, will he grab his hair and call him a f.a.g?

If the triangle made by the speakers and the floor had a right angle he could apply Pythagoras' Theorem and show that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. No one could argue that it is not.

--You guys are my friends.

George is looking at the floor now, his eyes hidden by the fall of his hair.

--You have other friends, man. You could be off playing Dungeons & Dragons with them. Not getting into trouble. Not burning up brain cells. You're going to college, man, you got better things to do.

Andy blinks.

College. What's so great about college? Everyone makes a big deal out of it. All college really means is going someplace and being all alone. Pythagoras was head of a secret society, he believed that at its deepest level, reality is mathematical. The inner circle of his followers were the Mathematikoi. They shared his beliefs.

--My other friends don't understand me.

George laughs.

Andy closes his eyes. Here comes his ration of s.h.i.t.

George reaches for the stereo.

--Little brother, if you're hanging with us because you think we understand you, you are in the wrong place.

He flips the needle down and it hits the groove and "Children of the Grave" blasts Andy's face in perfect stereo.

He opens his eyes and watches his brother get up and kick Paul and Hector apart long enough to be able to get a beer out of the fridge.

He smiles and listens to the music, his favorite Sabbath song, the one his brother picked out for him.

Manners Worth Gold Jeff angles the pickup into its spot between the 240Z and the Beetle that he hopes will be running someday. He kills the engine, keeping his fingers crossed, and the engine cuts without giving the particular shudder and groan that means it won't go anywhere else for the rest of the day. Thank G.o.d for that. Late enough for work now that the bus is no longer an option. The truck is gonna have to get him there.

He listens to the sound of top volume Black Sabbath coming from inside his place. It'll be par for the course if they've sucked down all his brews. He thinks about peeling a twenty from the money Geezer gave him. Just to cover the cost of the beers those punks drank. He gets as far as sticking his hand in his pocket, and then pulls it out.

Better not. Geezer ends up meeting the kids, someone might say something about how much money they got. He wants them to have two bills, it better be two bills. And he'll still come out of it with forty. So that's cool.

He walks around the 240Z, running his hand across a primered patch of Bondo. He remembers when he and Bob used buckets of the stuff to fill in the dents and creases on a '53 Ford Crestline they'd fixed up in high school. Man, they'd just about shoveled it onto that car. Sucker made some time, though. So did they. Lots of chicks took a ride in the back seat of that jalopy.

It was the right thing, not saying anything to Geezer about George and Andy being Bob's kids. Would have just queered the deal and they'd have been out the cash. Bad enough Amy's name came up.

He steps up on the porch, wondering if she really is dealing crank these days, pulls open the door of his trailer, and looks at the mess in the kitchen and the stoned kids scattered on the carpet.

--f.u.c.king A.

Paul points at Hector.

--He did it.

Hector throws a beer can at him.

--f.a.ggot.

Paul goes for him, but Jeff gets him by the scruff and trips him.

--Enough. Cool it. Don't care who did what, let's see some a.s.ses cleaning this s.h.i.t up.

Andy gets up, moving around the trailer with the garbage bag, picking up the mess he had nothing to do with making.