Hotel Ambrose

Chapter 17.8

We crossed the highway to the shops. He led me to a bakery run by Chinas and I bought a pie for myself, and one for Jack (this was his name). After that we went to a service station and got Slurpees. I'd never had them before. We walked along the railway line, drinking the Slurpees.

"Who you live with?" he said.

"Nobody."

"Nobody?" He didn't believe me. "Where?"

"In a hotel."

"In a hotel," he said. No, he wasn't buying it at all.

"Dirty Joe sent us," I explained.

"Dirty who?"

So then I had to explain Dirty Joe.

"Who was in the hotel with you?" he said.

"Nobody."

"You said us."

"No I didn't."

"You're a fucking liar."

I tipped the Slurpee up into my mouth and tapped the bottom of it like a bongo drum. None came out. "My wife and my kid," I said.

Jack burst out laughing.

"Fuck you," I said, bringing the cup down again. Something in my voice must have made him stop laughing, and he didn't say anything for a while – just slurped through his straw, which is why they're called Slurpees I guess.

"You fuck her?" he said, after a while.

"What?"

"You know. Fuck. Her."

I didn't say anything.

"She was your wife, right?" There was a smile at the corner of his mouth.

"Don't talk about her."

He shrugged and turned away. There was a cat in the sun on the front step of an old boarded-up hall behind a cyclone fence. Jack threw his Slurpee at it and it bolted. Bits of Slurpee clung to the cyclone fence like magic. The cat went back to cleaning itself in a different sunny spot, and Jack told it that it was a cocksucking piece of catshit.

Then he turned back to me. "Where's your kid?"

"Dead."

"How?"

"Drowned."

He shrugged. I don't reckon he believed any of it. I realised that I didn't care.

"Do you want a job?" he said.

"What kind of job?"

"Rim job."

"Is that to do with cars?"

He burst out laughing. Then he pulled the knife out from under his coat again and handed it to me. "Yours," he said.

"Why?"

"You'll see."

I held it up and looked at the sun shining off the blade. "Knife," I said.

"You're a genius."

I ran it across the back of my wrist. When I lifted it away there was a bald patch there, the little hairs sticking to the blade. "Sharp," I said.

"Like it?"

I wasn't sure.

He gave me the scabbard. "Put it in this. Unless you want to slice your cock off."

I put the knife in the scabbard and slipped it in my pocket. He still hadn't told me what he wanted me to do with it.