King of a Small World by Rick Bennet

Author:Rick Bennet
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61145-522-9
Publisher: Arcade
Published: 2011-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

We drop the blonds off at their apartment, then head out of the city. To Prince George’s County. The first time she’s ever been out this way. Grew up in the area, but has never gone out across the Anacostia River. Amazing.

I’ve got the window down hoping the cold air will sober me up. Katrina’s in the back of the van, on the fold-out bed.

“Joey, put the window up,” she calls out. I ignore her. “Joey, it’s too cold. Come on.”

“There’s a blanket by your head.”

She giggles. “What’s that about head?” she asks.

I put on a Kenny G tape. White girls love it.

“I might be serious about that documentary,” she says. “I’ve got to do something. It could be good.”

“Yeah? You sleeping with the class project?”

“You fucking my father’s daughter?”

Pause.

“Come back here,” she says. “Pull over. I want to fuck you in the middle of the night, in the back of a van, on the side of a highway going over a ghetto, with jazz in my ears.”

She says that like it’s a triumph of imagination. I keep on driving, of course. Carefully. Afraid I’m drunker than I feel.

Out 295 we go. To Oxon Hill. Down a strip of shopping centers and motels and fast-food joints and gas stations and banks. The same stuff as everywhere.

Off the strip to the homes. Little homes. Working-class, middle-class. The poor in their apartment complexes. Late night, and the cold’s whipping through.

It’s K.C.’s game we’re going to. I find the house. Cars fill the driveway, spill out onto the street, crowding the neighbors. But the homeowner is Filipino and some of the neighbors are Filipino, so things have been worked out.

I park a block up, jam my bankroll into a slit in the carpet under the front seat, and get out.

“What’s that for?” Katrina asks.

“I don’t bring cash to this game,” I say. I don’t like bringing cash to private games because if they get raided or robbed, the police or the robbers will take your cheese, and you’re not getting it back from either one.

She nods.

I tell her I park a block up because, also if the police raid the joint, they’ll search all the cars parked out front.

As we walk, she asks me how often these places get raided.

I say it’s been years, but that there are rumors out that the police are pissed off because a cop who played around here killed himself recently.

The house is dark except for a light over the side door. The game is in the rec room downstairs, and the windows are blacked out. But the noise escapes. The talking and the clicking of chips. Muffled, but present.

I knock. A curtain pulls back off the door window, and an old Filipina woman peers out. The curtain drops, the door opens, and she steps back. I say hello. She smiles.

We go downstairs, and the heat and smoke and noise hit us square on. From the cold, fresh, late-night air outside to the enveloping staleness of a basement with eighteen people in it, most of whom smoke.

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