Bad to the Bones(13)
And it should not suck up every waking moment of anyone’s life, like it had done to this poor thing.
“Excuse me,” said Knoxie. “What’s your real name?”
Predictably, she sat erect and said prissily, “Asanga is my real name. It’s my true, inner—”
“Cut the crap.” Knoxie was getting tweaked. His fourteen-year-old daughter Sage often tried to run games on him like this. He shook his cell phone. “I’m talking to Madison Shellmound’s husband, Ford. How’s she going to remember you if you say Asanga? Now, why don’t you just cut to the chase and tell me the name on your driver’s license.”
She recited like a f*cking automaton. “We don’t need driver’s licenses. We are known by our spiritual—”
Slushy cut her off. He had her by the wooden necklace, gently tugging on it. “What hot stuff here is trying to say, my dear, is what name is on your birth certificate? What name did your mother give you, so she had something to call you by before you became enlightened? Oh, sorry, before you became a chosen one.”
“Oh. That.” She actually had to think about it. The question seemed to confuse her. Knitting her brows, she looked at her paper placemat.
She took so long that Knoxie said into his cell, “I’ll text you the answer, bro,” and hung up on Ford. He took a seat next to Slushy, earnestly confronting the confused girl.
Slushy had her by the necklace, so Knoxie covered her hand with his. “It’s cool,” he said, starting to get into the swing of things with the hippie lingo. “Your birth name was part of you back then, too. It’s like an orange. There are many segments of the whole.” Or some such thing. He’d briefly studied Buddhism when Nicole had gotten into it for a while. The chanting part was fun, but the actual practice just didn’t fit into an American lifestyle.
This seemed to work. She sniffed as though about to cry, and her eyes brimmed with tears, but she said, “Bellamy. Bellamy Jager. I used to live on Broken Saddle Drive. I have a little sister named Virginia.”
Knoxie squeezed her hand, and Slushy let go of the photo of her stupid master. “Good. Good girl. That’ll help a lot. Eat your eggs. Then I’ll take you to see Maddy. Más café negro, por favor,” he told the waitress, then texted Ford. “What a beautiful name. Bellamy.”
Slushy pointed at Bellamy with a fork full of potatoes. “Jager. Do I detect a bit of the old homeland?”
Knoxie drew away from the money man. “‘The old homeland’? Your last name is McGill.”
Slushy drew himself up, too. “That’s just a minor affectation I employ to soothe investors. Gives them financial confidence if they think I’m of the potato-eating tribe. My folks actually hailed from Heidelberg. And you?”
Bellamy was so ladylike, all rounded edges, with a voice like velvet. Knoxie had to harden his heart. Bellamy was a project, not a twat. She was a tool for The Bare Bones to achieve their ends—not a back warmer. “My grandparents lived in Berlin before the Great War. Luckily they got out in time and came through Ellis Island.”
“Ah,” said Slushy knowingly. “A Bible shortener.”
Knoxie hit the lawyer with the back of his hand. “What the f*ck, Slushy? You were in the joint. I thought you were more sensitive to racial slurs.” Still, Knoxie was burning with curiosity, so he asked Bellamy, “You’re Jewish, then? I’m just surprised you turned your back on all that rich heritage to join up with a…different group.” He knew the girl would just crawl back into her shell if he pushed his luck, so he was making a strong effort to be cool, casual. To operate with a light touch, when really he wanted to yank that f*cking wooden necklace from her throat and cover her with something respectable, like a black leather jacket.
She shrugged. “No big loss. All that hoo-haw meant nothing to me. I’ve finally come home, finally found meaning in my life. I barely knew my grandparents. That was their religion, not mine.”
Knoxie could say the same thing about Catholicism. That was his parents’ bag, not his. He owed no allegiance to it, had no obligation to believe any of its tenets. “You shouldn’t dismiss it so easily, Bellamy. You can reject the parts you don’t agree with deep down, but some of it might still be useful, or soothing in some way.”
Bellamy stuck out her lower lip. “Nothing about it is soothing to me. I barely remember any of the tenets. My life is my master and his powerful vibrations, his aura, his electromagnetic energy. Truth is what works.”
When Mann Montana walked into the biker grill, Slushy just about lost his shit. Montana was The Bare Bones’ choice for mayor during the November election. A tall, gangly guy with a protruding Adam’s apple and a ten gallon hat, he seemed an all right sort. Bikers fell over themselves to congratulate Montana on his latest success in some speech or other.
A giant of an Aztec named Tuzigoot did the soul shake with the politician. An Al Pacino lookalike named Duji congratulated the guy, too. Bobo Segrist, who ran The Bum Steer, was a newly inducted Prospect for the club. If he joined, Knoxie would be stuck running errands and doing grunt work with that clown. They’d be on the same level, with the same standing in the club. That alone was enough to give Knoxie pause for thought. He was ten years older than Bobo Segrist. But then maybe Bobo hadn’t wasted most of his life, like Knoxie had, in doing stupid shit.