Post by The Wanderer on May 17, 2005 14:09:44 GMT -8
When deuces are wild you can follow the queen.
I'd go too except I know where she's been.
- Suzanne Vega, No Cheap Thrill
I'd go too except I know where she's been.
- Suzanne Vega, No Cheap Thrill
The situation was so cliché as to be funny, but humor was a distant prospect.
He stood in an unthreatening slouch, an intense look boring into him through an eye slot in the reinforced fire door. The club was ‘exclusive,’ in the most serious sense, and there was no easy access password.
“Man, I just need to see Ronnie for a few minutes. I’m not looking to crash your shindig or anything. Can I talk to the man?”
The arrogant exasperation in the opposing eyes practically made him roll his own.
“Man, if I don’t know you, then sure as hell nobody in here knows you. And I don’t know any Ronnie, so step off before you get trouble you don’t want."
He saved himself the effort of sighing, and filtered his words from sounding completely sarcastic.
“Aw, but we’re friends. Aren’t we?”
There was a pause, and the intensity of the eyes began to glaze like Krispy Kreme. The click of unlocking began before the chump started answering.
“Oh, yeah…yeah man. Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-"
“I know. I know. It’s all right, man. We all have our off days. Trust me. I know.”
He stepped inside, the whoever that had been keeping him out now gawking like a star struck fanboy. He could care less, and made his way quietly through the joint.
Except for the modern additions of television sets, and an honest-to-god smoke fan in the ceiling, the place might as well have been one of the many shadowed speakeasies of his youth: booze without a license, gambling without the same. He had only been here twice before, each time riding the coattails of other false friends. But like Willy Sutton, you go where the money is. The good thing about robbing a criminal was that he was less than likely to call the cops on you.
He slinked past the tables ringed with broken men, and nodded to the more expensive tables that kept the breakers busy. They would never see him again, but he had to respect whatever it was they had done to get to where they were at. But, after a fashion, he also despised their inability to move onward from it.
Since he was inside, he obviously belonged. No one questioned. No one cared. The joys of apathy.
He tapped lightly on the office door and, after a moment, Ronnie answered.
* * *
Not long after, he left the place, Ronnie personally leading him out, and the fanboy falling over himself to hold the door open. In his fist was gripped a paper bag filled with enough portraits of Queen Elizabeth II to fill Buckingham.
On the street, he figured he had an hour or so before the sparkle wore off and they realized their dangerous mistake. They had never caught his name, and the place sure as hell didn’t have cameras. Ronnie was going to have a grand old time explaining to his boss why he had handed over the night’s take to a complete stranger.
He was going to have moving expenses soon, and he hadn’t felt like working in order to pay them.
He wondered what the exchange rate was these days.
