The Fury - Jason Pinter [76]
mustard. And a cream soda."
"Chocolate milk shake," I said. "And a side of fries."
The waiter nodded, walked off. I turned back to
Scotty.
"When did you start?" I asked.
He sighed, for a moment saying nothing. He was
steeling himself up to talk. "'Bout a year ago," he said.
"How? Who introduced you?"
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"I went to my buddy Kyle's house one night a week
after I got laid off. It was a few of us. Kyle's girlfriend,
some chick I'd been seeing for a month who dumped
me a few days later when she realized I couldn't afford
tables at the China Club anymore."
"Wow, that's a sob story if I ever heard one. Let me
call up Larry King for you."
"Dude, you're missing the point. Do you have any
idea what it's like, how utterly fucking hopeless you
feel, to live your whole life working for something only
to know it can end--" he snapped his fingers "--just
like that?"
Scotty sat there, leaning across the table like a life
coach trying to convince me of the path to righteous
ness. Though Scotty and I had almost nothing in
common--not our clothes, not our upbringing, not our
vocation--something about what he said hit home for
me. With my industry seemingly scaling back by the
day, not to mention the far too often times my life was
endangered by that chosen vocation, I knew how
tenuous things could be.
"Your friend Kyle," I said. "Go on."
"We stayed up late, drank a lot. I think our girls were
starting to get pissed off, feeling like we were paying
each other more attention than we were them. And they
were probably right. At some point I start jonesing for
a toke. I used in college a bit. I asked Kyle if he knew
where we could get some good stuff, and he kind of
looked at me and laughed."
Our food came, and Scotty tore into it before mine
had even been set down. The pastrami and rye disap
peared in several ravenous bites, washed down with a
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chug of cream soda. When he finished, Scotty smiled
and said, "Best sandwich in the world."
My chocolate milk shake looked a little silly in com
parison, but I took a long sip and felt like a kid again.
He wiped his mouth, placed the napkin gently on the
table and continued. "Kyle just got up, went into his
bedroom and came back with what looked like an eighth
of great bud. At first I didn't ask questions, I was just
looking forward to the feeling. When we were good and
baked--and man, that stuff baked us quick--I asked
him where he'd got it. Know what he told me?"
"What?"
"He said, 'leftovers.' I didn't know what the hell that
meant, so I asked him. He said times were tough, and
he'd been dealing a bit on the side. His mom just got
diagnosed with cervical cancer and she didn't have
health insurance. So he was dealing to help her out with
the bills. Kyle's dad died about ten years ago, drank
away every penny they had, even gambled some that
they didn't. So I asked him who set him up with that,
and he said he'd met a guy who was kind of like the
head recruiter. Kind of like Ben Affleck in Boiler Room,
the grand pooh-bah of the game. The guy you want to
talk to if you want in."
"So Kyle set you up with this guy."
"Yeah. Kyle said he was at some party where a guy
named Vinnie came and sold the host some coke. Kyle
was curious about making some extra coin, so he pulled
Vinnie aside. Vinnie gave him a phone number, and
that's all she wrote."
"And how did you get involved?" I asked.
Scotty chugged more of his cream soda, a frothy
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mustache trail on his upper lip. He saw me staring, and
wiped it away. "After a few weeks, I noticed Kyle was
coming home later and later, and then I saw him with
this sweet watch, a Movado. Brand-new, bought from
the store. He said he was pulling down two, three grand
a week easy. And that was just the beginning. So I asked
if Kyle would introduce me to his man, this recruiter
guy. Kyle tells me this guy is the one who makes all the
decisions, the guy who's in charge of everything. Kyle
sets up a meeting, I go in and talk with