“I’m from New Or-yuns.”
“Great city,” Jerry Gee said. “They got, what-do-you-call-’em, beignets that melt in your mouth. The broads the same way. Whatcha reading?”
The clothes in the dryers were spinning and falling, buttons clicking against metal, cloth toppling across the glass, like living creatures inside a bathysphere that had broken from its cable. The air smelled baked and clean and comfortable, like a womb Smiley didn’t want to leave. He dropped his eyes to his comic. Wonder Woman was deflecting bullets with her magic bracelets.
“Hey, you hearing me?” Jerry Gee said.
“I’m reading about Wonder Woman.”
“Yeah? She’s a chunk, huh?” Jerry Gee said.
“Don’t be disrespectful of her,” Smiley said.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I dig her, too,” Jerry Gee said. His dark hair glistened with oil, one strand hanging through an eyebrow, an impish working-class kid out of a 1930s Bowery Boys film. “There’s a fat envelope for you in our car. It’s from a mutual friend.”
“Then we can have some lunch,” the second man said. He was taller than the other man and wore his shirt lapels outside his suit, exposing his chest hair. There were rings on his fingers inset with stones, more like brass knuckles than jewelry. “My name is Marco. Like Marco Polo. After we have lunch, we’ll come back and help you fold your clothes.”
Smiley rolled his comic and sat with his hands clamped between his thighs. “I have to go wee-wee.”
“We’ll go with you. To watch the bathroom door,” Jerry Gee said. He leaned down. “This place is full of cannibals, man. You ought to find a better part of town.”
Smiley squeezed his penis. “I’m going to wet myself.”
“Go. By all means,” Jerry Gee said, stepping back.
The men followed Smiley to the restroom and waited outside. Marco combed his hair in a mirror, squatting to get a better view of himself, patting his hair with his free hand. Jerry Gee hit the door with his fist. “Roll up your wiener. There’s people waiting here.”
The two men laughed without sound.
“I’m going poop,” Smiley replied through the door.
“You can take the trash can with you,” Marco said.
Smiley opened the door. A piece of toilet paper was stuck to his shoe. Marco glanced back into the Laundromat, then shoved Smiley into the alley. “Get in the Buick. We’re gonna have a talk.”
“No, you made fun of me.”
Jerry Gee opened the rear door of the Buick. Marco hooked one finger in Smiley’s mouth and slung him inside and climbed in after him. Jerry Gee got behind the wheel, locked the doors, and started the engine. In seconds they were on the four-lane, ascending a bridge that overlooked the Atchafalaya River and miles of flooded woods where frightened egrets lifted into the air like snowflakes blowing in a violent wind.
Jerry Gee drove along a levee and parked in a grove of persimmons by a bay. Through the tree trunks, Smiley saw the sunlight blazing on the water and a half-sunken shrimp boat circled by alligator gars that rolled like sea serpents. Jerry Gee got out and opened the back door. He pulled Smiley onto the ground, which was covered with damp yellow leaves that were spotted with black mold. Jerry Gee scooped up a handful and stuffed them into Smiley’s mouth. Smiley gagged and tried to crawl away. Jerry Gee kicked him between the buttocks, then stood on his spine.
“This is the preview. Don’t make us look at the main feature. You had a job to do, but you didn’t do it. You were supposed to call in with what you learned or clip the guy.”
Smiley sat up, hiccupping, his eyes cups of grease and dirt. Marco leaned down and slapped him across the ear. “You deaf? Answer the man!”
Smiley stared at the movements of the gars, the waves washing through the pilothouse of the sunken boat, the persimmons on the ground that were crawling with ants.
“What’s it take?” Marco said. “You want us to hurt you? I mean really hurt you? I got tools in the trunk you ain’t gonna like.”
“Get him up,” Jerry Gee said.
Marco picked up Smiley and began dusting him off.
“Against the car,” Jerry Gee said.
Marco held his hands out palms up, as though to say What?
“Do it,” Jerry Gee said.
Marco shoved Smiley over the fender and pushed his face down on the hood, flattening it sideways against the metal, twisting Smiley’s mouth out of shape.
Jerry Gee picked up a broken tree branch. “I heard you had a bad time in an orphanage and you ended up queer-bait on the streets. So how about a trip down Memory Lane? Get in touch with the origins of your problem?”
Jerry Gee nodded at Marco. Marco stared back and mouthed, What the fuck?
“Take his pants down,” Jerry Gee said.
They were elastic-waisted and slid easily over the knees. Even though the weather was warm, Smiley’s buttocks and thighs prickled.
“Last chance, Smiley,” Jerry Gee said, teasing Smiley’s butt with the points of the branch.
“Only my friends call me Smiley. You’re not my friend.”
“You caused all this,” Jerry Gee said. “So shut up.”
Smiley felt a pain like a handsaw piercing his rectum and viscera and climbing up his spine and out his mouth.
When he woke up, he was lying on the ground. The two men were looking down at him; framed against the sun, their faces were lost in shadow.
“You all right, little buddy?” Marco said.
Smiley didn’t answer.
“You gonna be a good boy?” Jerry Gee said.
“Yes,” Smiley said.
“What’d you get for us?” Jerry Gee said.
“The bad man from Texas on my recorder.”
“Why didn’t you just say that?”
“Because he doesn’t know anything about anything. I didn’t want anybody mad at me.”
“You should have popped him,” Jerry Gee said.
“He didn’t kill his family. Someone told me a big fib.”
“You’re a righteous dude,” Marco said, lifting him to his feet. “Clean yourself up and get in the car. We’ll buy you an ice cream on the way back to your car. Hey, act like a man and stop crying.”
Smiley’s eyes were swimming. Inside the bronze glaze on the water, he saw a metal shield rise to the surface like a great bubble of air released from the ancient world. A woman clad in a red and gold bodice and metallic-blue shorts sprinkled with stars waded to the shore, a magic rope coiled on her belt. She smiled at him, her eyes filled with the lights of love and pity.
The men took him back to the Laundromat and folded his laundry for him and put it into a basket. Marco set the basket in the back of Smiley’s car and got in the front, and Jerry Gee followed them down the highway to the business district of a small town that had been killed by Walmart. The sun had just set. The buildings and streets were deserted, the store signs removed, the walls pocked with rusted spikes. The entire neighborhood seemed leached of color, even the sky, like a cardboard movie set. A few cars were parked behind an old two-story building that once was a dry goods store. Smiley and the men ascended wood stairs in back and went inside. There was a rumbling sound below.
“You rent a room above a bowling alley?” Marco said.
Smiley sat on the bed and stared into space. “I pretend they’re toy soldiers. They all fall down and get up again.”
“You’re a special kind of guy, all right,” Jerry Gee said. “Where’s the recorder?”
“I’ll get it.” Smiley reached toward the nightstand.
“Whoa,” Marco said. He pulled out the drawer and removed the recorder. He clicked it on and listened. “That’s Tillinger?”
“I told you, didn’t I?” Smiley said.