Moondogs - Alexander Yates [81]
Four rounds later Katrina turned to Benicio and started saying “karaoke” over and over. She shook him lightly by the shoulders, as though he didn’t understand, but needed to. They split the tab five ways and then, on their way out, Benicio and Ping swung by the men’s room. There was a line, so they waited together in awkward silence. From where they stood they could see Charlie’s table. One of the dwarf waiters had been lifted onto the tabletop, where he kicked and spun in a stubby impersonation of Riverdance. Everybody at the table howled. Benicio chuckled, and rolled his eyes.
“What?” Ping asked.
Benicio shrugged, and gestured to the dwarf on the table. “That.”
“What about that?”
“Well … come on. I mean, this was fun and all, but that’s pretty skeezy, isn’t it? I mean, this whole place is exploitive. It’s like a carnival from the fifties.”
“Ah-ha,” Ping said, again stroking his well-groomed beard. “Hey, do me a favor. Check out the picture on the men’s room door.”
Benicio leaned out of line to get a better look at the door. On the ladies’ room there was a generic photo of a model, all cleavage and eyeballs, in a cheap wooden frame. On the men’s room there was another framed photo of a shirtless teenager on a beach. Benicio recognized the photo. It was a photo of him. His wetsuit was on up to his waist and he was posing beside his assembled dive gear. His torso was leaner and tanner than it would ever be again, and he was mugging goofily for the camera.
“Daddy owns this place,” Ping said. “Does that make daddy exploitive and skeezy, too?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking right back at Ping. “It does.”
OUTSIDE IT HAD SOMEHOW gotten hotter. A few car alarms were going off, and someone announced that there’d been a tremor, but Benicio hadn’t felt anything. Katrina grabbed his wrist and they ran—what she did was more of a skip, actually—through three lanes of sluggish traffic. They waited on the sunburned grassy median for Bobby, Ping and the others to catch up before running through another three. Benicio lost track of how long they walked, but he was dripping with sweat by the time they finally entered a little karaoke club with purple light and synthesized music.
Katrina headed to the front to wait her turn at the microphone while the rest of them tumbled into soft chairs like melting ice. Bobby’s friends ordered drinks, but only so they wouldn’t be hassled about taking up a table, and continued discussing politics with hot, drunk enthusiasm. Ping sat beside Benicio and stared at him like there was something on his mind. Benicio’s hackles were still up from seeing his picture on the men’s room door, and he stared right back, inviting him to spill.
“Where did you say you came from, again?” Ping finally asked.
“I didn’t. My family lives in Chicago.” Even as he said this he realized it wasn’t true anymore. His mother was dead, and his father essentially lived here. “I flew out of a place called Virginia.”
“Where in Virginia?”
“Around the middle. It’s a smallish town in the mountains.”
“Ah-ha.” Ping nodded for a long while, staring at Benicio, eyes fixed in his moving head. “Assume, for a moment, that I can understand an answer slightly more complex than that.”
Benicio shifted in his chair, aware that Bobby and Baby Cookie were listening in. “Charlottesville.”
“So, you’re a Wahoo?” Ping asked. Wahoo was slang for the collar-popping students at the University of Virginia, among whom Benicio had felt comfortable but never completely at home.
“You know UVA?” he asked, unable to hide his surprise.
“Bobby and I were roommates at Georgetown. Sometimes in the fall we’d rent a car and drive down to watch you guys lose football games.”
“Small world.”
“Actually, it’s pretty big.” Ping took a tiny swig of his beer. “So, are you as red as your state? Are you a Balikatan man?”
“A what? I don’t speak—”
“It’s the name of a military operation in the south,” Bobby said, looking wary.
“It’s the name of your military operation,” Ping said, directing the your and a rigid index finger square at Benicio’s chest.