The Entropy of Bones Read online

  “Great, this is great. So you know, Rice, right? Well, about a year and a half ago, I had some problems, right? And Rice, well, he kind of took me in and made me feel better.” She lost herself in the memory for too long.

  And then what happened? I asked.

  “Well, he . . . I screwed up. I thought, he never said but I thought that what he and I had was exclusive. See, that was my bad for not asking the right questions. Anyway, I got really upset and mad. So I started cutting on myself. And Rice, he said I shouldn’t do that. And I thought that he meant he didn’t want to see it, not that like he really cared about me and didn’t want me to hurt myself. So to show him how angry I was that he would just not care like that, I cut myself in his bed. I bled all over his furniture, I feel so bad about that . . . I bled on his sheets, his bed . . .”

  What do you want? I asked her slowly, feeling nauseous.

  “It’s just that I’ve seen you with him, and I’m not mad. I’ve seen him with so many women over the past year and a half. I’m not mad, really. But if you could just let him know that I’m not the possessive bitch I was before. I can share now. Can you let him know that I still love him? That I want to be with him? And that I swear I won’t let anything happen like that again? The cutting, I mean? I just need him in my life.”

  I left the bathroom panicked, not caring who saw. I should have. Poppy lounged in a corner with Shotgun, made up in skinny jeans, a retro herringbone button-up, and, I shit you not, black eye liner.

  “Oh, Matt, look, it’s your little Mongoloid friend.” Poppy yawned.

  What? I went in hot but Matt got between us.

  “Matt tells me you’re part Mongolian, aren’t you? Weren’t they the Mongoloids of old? Don’t be so sensitive, girl. You’re named after the Great Khan’s daughter, aren’t you?” I let my rage for her slide as I saw the worry in Matt’s face. He knew that I could step by him if I wanted to and he was terrified that would mean the death of his girl.

  Go home, Shotgun, I told him, holding his face with both hands. This ain’t your place.

  “Is it yours?” He asked the genuine question.

  I left the club and went straight to my room. I woke the next morning with a clear plan. I had the head of the front office come see me. I asked him if he knew who I was and what my role was. He said that he was to give me unlimited access to whatever I wanted under the orders of Rice Montague Junior. I understood the distinction of those orders now. Rice Junior made the Suites fun and exciting. But Rice Senior had poured the foundation.

  I want to see the cameras. The front office clerk looked confused then refused, but only for a second.

  Behind the front desk, two faux doors and hanging plastic shielded an array of video cameras from the prying eyes of the public. The battery of screens when I walked in were innocuous enough—front lobby, every hallway of the thirty-story Suites, the kitchen, the bar, each of the restaurants, the elevators. All public places. I let the chief of the front office staff leave and hung out with the video operator for a minute.

  How long you been working here? I asked in as friendly a voice as I could manage.

  “About three years.”

  Like it?

  “Love it. Mr. Montague Junior is the best . . .”

  Yeah, I know. Hey, you work nights ever?

  “Yeah, when the club is open I work nights.”

  I look familiar to you? I asked, hoping to take the interrogation to its final resting place sooner rather than later.

  “No. Have we met before?”

  I’m pretty sure I haven’t seen you. But let me ask you something. You know Mr. Khan? He nodded his head, suddenly truly afraid. I made a gesture to the monitors and then asked him. You remember the last time you saw Mr. Khan?

  “About a month ago. Maybe longer. At the club.”

  And do you remember who did that to him at the club? The video operator nodded his head. Good, because I don’t do well repeating myself so I’m only going to make this request once. I want to see the footage of people’s rooms.

  It was up in twenty seconds. Any hotel that offers a hundred dollars of champagne in the wet bar and doesn’t have a twenty-dollar webcam somewhere in their rooms is not the type of business that stays around for long. I knew they were there, probably audio as well. At first I didn’t care about the audio until the video operator showed me the live feeds from the thirteenth floor. Most were pitch dark. But Poppy, oh Poppy. The only time she wasn’t wearing nightclothes was when she was in her room. Then she wore nothing at all.

  “I’ll leave,” the video tech said as Poppy chatted casually on the phone.

  Like hell you will. If I’ve got to see this bony bitch naked, so do you. That was when he turned on the mic. Her weirdly accented voice resonated to us.

  “It makes no sense. Rice thinks he can have his little minions say whatever they want and not get punished. I’m sick of it, brother.” She complained like a child. “And then he’s got this freak of a Mongoloid that he’s grooming for who fucking knows what but it’s the only interesting thing here. I want to smash it into bits and sup the marrow from its bones but, well, you heard what it did to Samovar. There’s no way she can be the one that hurt you but the similarity is unsettling.”

  “I think she’s talking about you,” the tech said.

  I know. Now shut up. Something happened in that moment. Poppy looked directly into the camera. She didn’t move from her couch, she just stared directly at the fire alarm that held the camera.

  “And that’s not the worst part, brother. I think the Mongoloid is spying on me. I know. Even though I have one of her friends by his throat and can squeeze whenever I want to, the Mongoloid is retarded enough to try to invade my privacy. Is it wrong to call a retarded Asian a Mongoloid?”

  She snapped her fingers and the camera went dead. I cursed at the surveillance operator with my eyes. His sweat said it all.

  “I don’t know. Sometimes heat, sometimes faulty wiring. A rat might have gnawed the wires.”

  Yeah, I barked, leaving the room. Fucking rats!

  She’d heard me. Fourteen floors below through a one-way audio device she heard me tell the video tech to shut up. Well, if she heard that, I’d be sure she’d hear me yelling in the elevator.

  You touch a hair of Matt’s head and what I did to your boy Khan will seem like a slumber party compared to the nightmare I put you through, you pale-faced bony bitch!

  I was exhausted by the time I got back to the penthouse. Not physically, just mentally. I kept looking for a bogeyman that wasn’t there and couldn’t do anything about the megabitch that stood out in front of me. I resolved that Rice was no threat. He was surrounded by people who cared about him, people he did good things for. Sure, there were some crazy chicks around but that comes with any dude that has a lot of money. If all I had to do for security was protect him from them, not a problem. No one in the hotel would even think of hurting him so he was safe enough here. Poppy would have to be taken care of. Not killed, but moved away from me, and more importantly Shotgun. But even that wasn’t a major necessity so long as we stopped antagonizing each other.

  When I woke the next day I could feel Rice only minutes away. I dressed in my best gear and ran down the stairs happy. As I passed the thirteenth floor, I could feel Poppy’s grin.

  “Go run,” Rat Teeth said in my mind. “Go meet your master.” But I ignored it. There would be time for her later. I reached the lobby just as he walked in the door. Everyone applauded for him. But Rice came up to me directly and gave me a big hug.

  “Find anything interesting?” he said, his lips close enough to kiss mine.

  They all love you.

  “Then everything is as it should be.” He smiled and took me by the hand into the elevator.

  Three weeks later, Shotgun killed himself.

  Chapter Ten: Shotgun

  Three days before finals started Narayana appeared in my room, drunk. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d found a
way to crawl through the small porthole that pointed out across the water. It was the scent of his liquor, dark and strong, that woke me.

  What is it, Raj? I asked, sitting straight up.

  “You play game smart,” he stated and asked. More trashed than I’d ever heard him. It took a second to remember the conversation from years before.

  Yeah, Raj?

  “No one see you unless you want to be seen. You don’t want to be seen, you poke out eyes. You good, Chabi.”

  You too, Raj, I said, scared of him for the first time in a long while.

  “No. I am black sheep of black sheep family.” I waited for more but only heard him slump in a corner. I prayed to Gods I didn’t believe in that Mom didn’t hear it as well.

  Then forget the family if that’s all they see you as, I said, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. You’re no black sheep to me. I looked your name up. Raj is king, right? That’s you, king of the badasses.

  “Then you princess badass.” I felt the smile in the darkness more than I saw it. “I lay with many women. But you, you my only child.” The enormity of the statement choked me. I wanted to respond but I knew in that moment of hesitation he’d left my room. I curse myself to this day for what I did next. I went to sleep. I allowed whatever self-doubt and confusion I was feeling to overwhelm me and I just closed my eyes.

  In the morning Narayana disappeared.

  There was maddening efficiency in his Houdini. There was no rubble, no measure of struggle on his boat, in his affairs, in the dammed air even. Had a hole opened in the middle of the sky and sucked him through there would have been more of a mark of his absence. Instead I got the insistent rocking of the tide against his hull, the familiar smell of his bourbon vanilla tea mixed with his favorite black rum from Nepal still perfuming his cabin. Nothing had changed except my mentor, my guide, was simply gone.

  I sensed that absence as soon as I woke but ignored it, past my ten-mile swim to the Bay. Past my thirty-mile bike ride, past even swabbing his deck. I refuted the growing tension at the lack of his presence on the fringe of my senses. But when he didn’t come up on deck at his usual 8:30, I raged. A quick survey of his boat and the dock revealed his car, his clothes, and all his weapons in their stored areas. Even his size three rice paddy shoes rested perfectly at the foot of his bed. Something about that image above all others triggered panic in me. I screamed.

  Like I never screamed before, I shrieked with all my silent voice begging for some sort of sonic recognition.

  Narayana!

  Mom came running, shaken out of sleep if her robe was any indication. Out beyond the edge of where I cared, cars entering the freeway near the dock crashed into each other. Other houseboats woke violently and passing ship’s captains would complain of headaches for days. But only Mom came running. I don’t remember her ever being on the Mansai. But somehow she was in the cabin in under a minute.

  He’s gone. He’s . . . he’s gone, I told her, gasping for air as though I needed it to speak.

  “Chabi, I don’t understand. What . . .”

  He’s gone, Mommy. I don’t know . . . I moaned, clawing her arm with no regard to my strength. Bless her for not flinching.

  “He’ll be back?” she said, taking in Narayana’s simple cabin and my panic for the first time.

  No! I snapped, my knees buckling as I tried to stand. He doesn’t just go. If he does, he lets me know. The car is still here. All the clothes, the weapons . . . I crawled over to his stack of hundreds he hid in his coffee tin and showed it to Mom. See? He didn’t even take his money.

  “Ok. Calm down.” Mom tried but it was no good. I flailed emotionally and physically. I tried so hard to scream with an actual human voice. I pushed and clenched with my stomach, locked my mouth open. But only saliva and pathetic defeat came out.

  Don’t ask how I got back to Mom’s boat. How I disrobed, showered, and was placed in bed. I have vague memories of Mom propping me up in the shower, herself naked. All I’m sure of was my misery.

  I could go days without eating, but no more than half an hour without breaking down bawling. Even when the dockmaster came by to inform us that Narayana had paid his dock fees for the next decade. Even when the Little Kid came by to my pitch-black room, filled with compassion and courage, to tell me he’d forged all my finals so I passed and graduated high school. Even when neighbors came by with vague complaints that they could “hear” silent cries that were keeping them up at night, I could not stop wailing.

  I entertained no fantasy of Narayana returning the same way he left. In hindsight his departure that last night felt too much like a permanent good-bye. He was deliberate, grand at times, even demonstrative, but Raj was never dramatic. There would be no repeat performance of this act. This was a one-act misery play performed for me and me alone. I just didn’t know what I’d done to earn admission. My agony had teeth. With no external source to feed it, the misery began devouring me. Every detail of each second I spent with Narayana I tilled and sifted like a keen-eyed prospector. All I found was dirt and shale. In each moment in all ways I had done exactly what he told me since that first day four years prior. That didn’t help.

  Finally it was the training, not my mother’s threats to have me hospitalized, and not the Little Kid’s constant calls I never returned that got me moving again. I’d been inconsolable for ten days straight, lying on my bed, eating only crackers and water in between embarrassing sobbing fits. The morning of the tenth day I left my 7 x 9 room and tried to make it to the bathroom. But my leg cramped. Understand, I’d swum across the Bay at dawn, run up Mount Tam in half an hour with an extra forty pounds on me, and biked down to Palo Alto and back without water, but I’d never had a leg cramp. I found the conflicting energies in the muscle with my fingers and deadened the combat in my thigh in under a minute by nerve-striking myself, but the message was clear. I was getting soft.

  In the past I trained for the privilege of seeing the rare Narayana smile. Now I trained because I was angry. I ran from the houseboat to Petaluma. It took two hours. When I stopped, I realized I was still wearing the same clothes I’d lounged around in for the past ten days. A light-skinned young guy in desperate need of some post ’90s fashion sense, maybe a little older than me, with an off smile, offered me some water, which I took before I realized I was thirsty. I was out of breath, sweating harder than I ever had with Narayana.

  “Wanna smoke?” The bandanna-headed water guy offered a sweet smelling joint with a pulpy white mass that was not marijuana. I almost said yes.

  Instead I smiled and kept running until I reached Napa. By the time I got there, I remembered the grief that was leaching out of me, in my stride, my breathing, my strength.

  “No more crying.” Those words came to me almost as quickly as the preceding “Fuck Narayana.”

  I was completely in Rice’s thrall when the news came down. I’d almost forgotten about Shotgun if I’m honest. I hadn’t been back to the junk in over a week. Hadn’t spoken to Mom, hadn’t practiced my katas, hadn’t done any part of my exercises. I broke every piece of training equipment in the Suites gym just looking for some sort of challenge.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Rice said earnestly as we sat at the lobby bar late one night. He looked even better in the low light, his image reflecting off the wood-framed mirror that the thousand-dollar bottles of booze rested on in the back bar. “Let’s give you some practice and me some money. What do you say to a bare-knuckle fighting event? Invitation only. Women only. Winner gets purse, of let’s say ninety thousand dollars? We’ll see who shows.”

  You serious? He was probing. If I didn’t comment on my own past, would he know about me? I still hadn’t told him about my private shame Narayana, more out of instinct than reason. But I felt that resistance slipping.

  “Only if you are.” He smiled, taking a bite out of an excessively stuffed portobello mushroom. “Look, I’ve got the contacts in the martial arts world, I’m sure I can get a one-night license from the California g
aming commission, or screw that, let’s just keep it illegal. Get a more exciting class of fighter that way. We do mixed disciplines, no gloves, no pads, all of it. Two hundred dollars, no four hundred dollars ticket price, clear out the dance floor for one night and we have capacity for twelve hundred easy. Two thousand if we’re not caring about fire hazards.”

  Yeah. Sure. I was excited to see him so happy. I would’ve done anything to keep that smile going. Like I said, I was in his thrall. So were the employees and patrons that walked by all trying to gain a moment of his attention.

  “Great.” And then he overplayed his card. “I’ll sponsor you. Or rather my family will. You’re going to have to declare a discipline or a tradition you follow, you know that right?”

  Freestyle. I tucked my chin like we were about to fight when a call came through on the burner Shotgun got for me months earlier. I’d forgotten I even had it until I put on a forgotten hoodie upstairs.

  “He’s dead,” was all Dale would say on the phone. I knew who he meant. Rice demanded I take one of the corporate drivers up to the farm. We compromised and I just took one of the cars. The outside world shocked me. I hadn’t seen the sky in days. It felt like what those gamblers in Vegas must feel like after they’ve woken up years after they’ve depleted themselves emotionally, financially, and physically. Only the frozen calm of Dale’s voice announcing his nephew’s death reminded me of another’s suffering.

  I arrived just as the police were leaving the main house, which sat a fair distance away from the more illegal side of the family business. They carted out a blood-splattered cadaver and a small pail, which I only assumed were the remnants of his head. I couldn’t bring myself to look. As soon as I walked in, Roderick collapsed on me in tears. No doubt it was a sight, my tiny frame trying to support the bear. But Dale didn’t try to stop him and he was the only one there. I held the big man as best I could and felt his soul break on me again and again. He mourned the way warriors of old did; he let it all out and left nothing to feel ashamed about. Dale sat in a small corner in their dining room and drank out of a big bottle.