Synopsis
Book by Cavell Benjamin
Extrait
BALLS, BALLS, BALLS
On Thursday, a man comes into the store and asks me how to kill his wife. I know, because it’s my business to know, that what he really wants to ask is how to kill his wife and not get caught.
The man wears a short-sleeved button-down shirt and dark blue Dockers. His face is cratered with acne scars. It looks like the surface of the moon. I know without being told that this man works at one of the tech firms that have sprung up in the last year or so all along the road from Albany. He has never lifted a weight in his life. He has probably never been in a fight. He has never even been paintballing. But for some reason I feel sorry for this poor, bony fool and so I ask him whether he has a gas furnace.
I explain how to drill a hole in the main line that will allow a tiny stream of gas to trickle into his basement. The emission is so gradual that his wife is unlikely to notice. This is less detectable than disabling the pilot light on a gas stove. Also, it’s more controllable than blocking the return-air vents and filling the house with carbon monoxide. Then I tell him that he’ll need a spark.
The spark can come from anything. The static electricity of shoes scuffing a rug, the momentary discharge from the flipping of a light switch, the red power light on a clock radio that usually clicks on when the alarm sounds, a lightbulb that has been filled with gasoline and then screwed back into the socket—each can become a trigger that will turn out all the lights, if he knows what I mean. He does. He buys the Taskmaster Tool Kit (Deluxe Set), $179.99 on sale.
In the afternoon, I tell a nineteen-year-old in a fatigue jacket how to make napalm from gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate (just mix equal parts—diet cola and gasoline works also) and then he buys a superthin Maxi-Grip C-series folding knife ($124.99)—which can be concealed in a boot or even inside a shirt collar for easy access—and a telescoping graphite police baton ($64.95). I tell him two stories about my time in the SEALs and show him my tattoo of Freddie the Frogman and then sell him The Mercenary’s Guide to Urban Survival ($19.99, paperback), and he leaves smiling and even salutes me, almost dropping his new baton.
The tattoo is temporary (I got a whole box of them two years ago at a novelty shop in Jersey City) and I’ve never been in the Navy. I’ve never even been farther than Philadelphia. And I can’t swim.
My name is Logan Bryant. I sell sporting goods.
Actually, I sell sporting goods, hardware, athletic equipment, patio furniture, barbecue grills and hobby literature.
But don’t get me wrong: I’m not just some wanna-be. Truth is, I could have been a SEAL if I’d ever bothered to learn to swim. I hold at least a green belt in several fighting disciplines and am nearly a black belt in Thai kickboxing (I just haven’t had time to take the test). I am the uncontested star of what is generally acknowledged to be the fourth-best paintball team in the tristate area. (We were scheduled to compete for the national title on ESPN2 but were scratched at the last second. Politics.) I have a full collection of green and brown face paint in various shades. I was All-Conference at middle linebacker my junior year of high school and would have been All-State or maybe even Honorable Mention All-America the next year if I hadn’t quit. I used to have subscriptions to Soldier of Fortune and Guns and Ammo until Barry told me that no one reads those anymore. Also, I am confident in my willingness to take the life of another human being.
And I can almost bench-press three eighty-five.
Barry arrives as Lou and I are totaling Thursday’s receipts. Lou nods to him and Barry swaggers around a standing rack of catcher’s mitts and ducks under the counter. Barry is wearing a lime-green New York Jets warm-up jacket.
“The average American,” I am telling Lou, “has an IQ around seventy-three. At that level of intellect, even basic functioning requires considerable effort. Decisions that you or I would consider simple border on impossible for Joe Citizen. That’s why people are so easily swayed by celebrity pitchmen and Oprah Winfrey and demonstrations of the new-and-improved Spic and Span. That’s why a presidential candidate can give the same speech over and over—they’re all talking to five-year-olds. People are just like children.”
“But all people were children at one point,” Lou says.
“So?”
“So, if they’re children now, what were they then?”
I sigh. “I’m trying to illustrate a point.”
“And what is that?”
“What is what?”
“The point, guy, the point.”
“My point is that people, for the most part, have no understanding of the realities of the world. That’s why it’s so easy for guys like you and me to get ahead.”
Lou finishes with his receipts and lays them down on the counter in a neat stack. “Isn’t that the same point you made on Monday?”
“No,” I say, exasperated. “My point on Monday was that college degrees are meaningless and that the only useful intelligence is street smarts. And that guys like you and me should really be running this country—and would be if we had little pieces of paper that said we’d gone to Princeton. Also, my point on Monday was based on the figure they released over the weekend, which put the average national IQ around seventy-six. In light of the most recent data, the conclusions must be even more extreme.”
“And who,” Lou says, “is compiling this data?”
I stare at him. “What do you mean? It’s a study.”
“By who?” He smiles. “Who’s ‘they’?”
Before I can answer, Barry says, “Do you doubt what he’s saying, Louie?”
Lou shrugs. “I just don’t know if people are so dumb.”
“Don’t know,” Barry says. “Look around you, man. We have the corrupt, liberal media. We have unchecked and unquestioned federal power. We have suppression of the First and Second Amendments, babies being murdered, kids’ shows that promote homosexuality, twenty-four-hour music videos, political correctness, celebrity magazines that promote homosexuality, celebrity talk shows, school shootings, celebrity profiles, celebrity political campaigns, celeb- rity fund-raisers for homosexual causes. This country is in the midst of a moral, racial, political, economic, social, sexual, military, environmental, educational, moral, fiscal, ethical, moral, class-based, moral crisis. We have forgotten our morality. We need a leader with character, who can provide moral stewardship and protect our kids from nudity and foul language and violence in the media and from entertainment with a homosexual agenda and who will institute a foreign policy to keep the ragheads in check and who has the compassion necessary to phase out the welfare system that lets fifty million unwed, teenage black mothers live lazily in the veritable lap of luxury by sucking on the overtaxed teat of real, hardworking Americans. Instead, we get these goddamn midwestern smooth talkers, chosen—by fifty-three percent of voters according to the most recent statistics— on the basis of height, for Chrissake. And you don’t know if people are dumb?”
I watch Lou triumphantly.
“That’s quite a speech,” he says.
“Damn right,” Barry says. “I always have one ready for you goddamn bleeding hearts.”
Lou frowns. “Are you sure there are fifty million black girls on welfare?”
“Sure I’m sure,” Barry tells him.
“I’m tired of losing,” Barry says. “At paintball?” I say.
“That’s right.”
“We don’t lose too often.”
“Often enough.”
We’re at our gym, which is called Size, and Barry and I are taking turns on the leg press. He is wearing a tan leather weight belt to support his lower back. I pull the pin out of the weight stack—it was at two hundred, the weight Barry uses—and slide it into the hole marked four twenty-five.
There are only a few sluts in the weight room, stretching on the mats in the corner or else working on the lat pulldown, all of them dressed in spandex and string-strapped tank tops. I wait until a few of them are done with their various sets and then I lie back on the red-padded machine and set my feet shoulder width on the dimpled metal plate and push hard against it. The rack I am on slides away from the unmoving metal plate, and next to me four hundred twenty-five pounds of Bodysmith Nautilus weights creak upward in a quivering pile.
I can’t see anything but the white plaster of the ceiling, but I know the sluts must be looking. Even if they hadn’t already noticed me, the sound would have gotten their attention.
The ideal weight-lifting sound is never very loud. If you scream, you look like you’re trying too hard. The sound should combine the moan of sex with a muted angry roar. It should grow louder with each repetition, ending at about the same volume as a normal speaking voice.
When I am finished with the set, I sit up with my legs hanging off the edge of the machine and blot my face with a towel, looking out the side of my eye at one of the wall-size mirrors, inspecting the veins on my arms and the bulges of my chest and shoulders under the T-shirt.
I stand and Barry lies down for his next set.
“I’ve decided to bring in an expert,” h...
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