Roger said, “You need to go heeled.”
He reached to the rear of his right hip and patted the gun under his shirt, saying, “Yo, baby.”
Gwen said, “Be careful. That place is full of bad guys. You going to wear those clothes?”
Jinny looked down at himself, then over at Guignard for support. He said, “What’s wrong with these? I got this at Pierre’s. I’m dressed Charleston style.” He was wearing lime green linen casual slacks, a white banded bottom pull-over golf shirt, and a pair of five hundred dollar Italian tassel loafers, without socks.
“Those guys up there are going to be dressed in black and covered with tattoos. You don’t have a single tat showing. You’re not going to fit in.”
Jinny smiled, and headed out the back door, whistling. Most of the adventures he had had with the Junes had been profitable, so out in the June's driveway he got into his white Mercedes coupe, drove past The Battery, out of town, and headed up the interstate. Twenty minutes later he saw the SYAMF sign, and took the exit ramp. Those stomping boots were graphic as hell. He drove around a couple of blocks to where he had done a 360 back to the interstate, and entered the parking lot of the establishment he had come to visit. He parked at the far end of the lot, hoping to avoid getting any dings in the sides of his car, and not sure just how this visit was going to culminate. He had an intuition, and it told him to park as far away from the building as possible. He studied the vehicles in the lot, and found three kinds: pickup trucks, 1970s muscle cars, and Harleys. No Mercedes except his. There was a fat guy in a sleeveless Tshirt running a lawn mower over the few hardy weeds that tried to survive amidst the hardpacked dirt and dried pools of motor oil in the lot. The guy first stared at Jinny and then at the Mercedes.
Jinny didn’t have many expectations as he entered SYAMF, other than the picture Gwen had painted for him: guys in black clothes with tattoos. He didn’t know if this was a bar or a restaurant or a men’s salon, like Pierre’s, only maybe a little different. So when he saw what he saw, he wasn’t really surprised. He found a few neon signs on the walls, with their cords hanging down to an outlet. He saw eight or nine guys sitting in plastic chairs, some at tables and some not at tables. They all had at least one article of black clothing on, though Gwen was wrong in saying they all would be dressed entirely in black. Two had on camouflage pants, and several had on blue jeans, the cheap ones from Wal-Mart with the baggy butt. One even wore a sleeveless Tshirt, like the guy outside who was cutting weeds. Speaking of whom, he had followed Jinny into the building because he didn’t want to miss this action. Jinny turned and looked at him, and said, “You left the mower running.”
“Whas that?”
“You left the mower running.”
“What mower?”
“The one outside. The one you were cutting the weeds with.”
The guy turned back towards the door, listened, heard the mower buzzing outside, looked back at Jinny, then back at the door, then just stood looking at Jinny, deciding the mower could stay running, he wasn’t going to miss this action.
Jinny saw that most of the guys were drinking beer, so standing in the center of the main room, said to no one in particular, “Can I have one of those?”
No one answered immediately, all their mental computational power being devoted to deciphering this figure among them. Jinny was five foot two inches and two hundred pounds of heavy mass bone and rock hard muscle. As mentioned before, the Secret Service could install him as a bollard at the perimeter of the White House to defend against terrorist attack by armored vehicle. He was not an effeminate man, which all of these guys could relate to, but his clothes, they were a mystery. He could have been wearing a NASA space suit and not appeared any stranger. His shoes were worth more than a couple of the cars out in the parking lot. One guy looked at Jinny’s shoes, and then at the hightop dark green canvas boots he had paid $29.99 for at the Army Navy surplus store. Used.
Not getting an immediate answer, Jinny walked towards the back of the building and looked at the two smaller attached rooms, in one of which was a pool table. The other room appeared to be a kind of shrine. One wall was covered with Harley insignia stuff, another was covered with Confederate Army stuff, and the third was covered with neo-nazi stuff. Jinny didn’t recognize or understand most of the symbolism on the walls, but he knew a swastika when he saw it. Back in the main club room, the internal processors had completed the computation in a couple of the guys. As Jinny came back in, one of them said, “How ya doing?”
“Ok. But I’d feel better with one of those in my hand.”
The guy crushed his beer can, threw it on the stack in the corner, got up and got two cans out of a cooler against the wall, and handed one to Jinny. He sat down and said, “Watcha doin in here?”
Jinny drained half the can, said, “Some friends of mine said this was a hot spot in town. Said the sign outside means Stomp Your Ass Motherfuckers. Said I might like the place. So I came up.”
A second guy said, “You wear clothes like that, and you think this is your kind of place?”
“We have an old saying in Russia. You can’t tell a man by the clothes he wears.”
The one guy looked at the other guy, and said, “We got a saying like that too, but I can’t remember it. Can you?”
“Something about a newspaper. You can’t tell a newspaper by its color. Something like that.”
They both looked back at Jinny, and one said, “I ain’t never seen green pants before. Those are nice. I may get me a pair of those someday. Someday soon.” Jinny heard the first faint echo of malice in those words, which didn’t disconcert him one bit, as they would have done with most people.
The other guy said, “Assumin this is your type of place, what you here for? Other than a beer?”
Jinny drained his beer, crushed the can, and tossed it on the pile. He hated beer in cans. On tap was fine, in the bottle was ok, but cans, yuk. Jinny didn’t have any of the buttons at the front of his golf shirt buttoned, so his throat and upper chest was exposed. A guy across the room stared at his chest hair. Jinny said, “I’m looking for some guys, friends of mine. They’re from Idaho, down here on vacation. I lost their phone number. But they’re Adolf types, so I thought they may have stopped in here. I wanna look them up while they’re here, have a beer together.”
Some of the guys in the room had been there earlier in the day, when the NNs had been in with Richard. They knew one of their bros had offered the NNs a place to stay, and that’s where they were now. They remembered how Richard had looked, and now here was second guy dressed funny. None of them could remember anyone dressed this way ever having been in their building, and now there had been two in one day. What was going on?
What was going on was that this was too much too bear. Some of the guys had been drinking for several hours, and the natives got restless all of a sudden. The guy who had commented on Jinny’s pants stood up, dropped his almost full can of beer on the floor, and said, “Them green pants got to go.”
Jinny looked down at his pants, which he thought were very sporty, because Gwen thought they were very sporty, and said, “You want me to go?”
The guy leered at his buddy, saying, “No, I just want them to go. You can stay if you want, but the pants got to go. In the trash.” Several of the guys laughed.
Jinny could feel which way the wind was blowing now. He’d come to find the NNs, and if that took a little ruckus, that was ok with him. He said, “You want these pants off me, huh? Any reason for that? Other than you don’t like the color?”
The mental processors turned on again, and after ten seconds, a couple of them had computed accurately, but not the one in the head of the guy issuing the challenge. He just stood there. One of the others saw this and said to him, “The guy’s saying you want to suck him off. Get it?”
The guy got it, turned red under his beard, cranked up the motivation, and mo
ved towards Jinny. Jinny could have ended the entire encounter right then and there by pulling his gun, but he wanted to see what these boys brought to the table. The guy was six two, making him a foot taller than Jinny. He closed, telegraphing his right handed haymaker. Jinny ducked a couple of inches, let the swing pass over his head, and came up with a left hook that penetrated deep into the guy’s gut; like up to the elbow. Jinny felt some squishy stuff around his hammer-like fist, and wondered which of the vital organs he had displaced. Anatomy was not one of his best subjects. That was the end of that. The guy expelled one breath and one grunt, sank to his knees, and fell over onto his side in fetal position. He remained alive, but non-functional.
Jinny stood up from his crouch and said, “I like these pants. Green is a nice color. And Gwenny likes them.”
A few of the others mobilized, and the brawl was on. But not for very long. Jinny dropped two more before one of them got him from behind. The guy joined his hands together in a double fist and rained it down on Jinny’s back, which was like hitting the back of a grizzly bear. When this produced no adverse effect, he pounded the back of Jinny’s head, Jinny being occupied by two guys in front of him. Jinny saw gray in front of his eyes for a few seconds, standing still. Then the guy behind him grabbed the back of Jinny’s pants at the waist, and ripped downward. Jinny’s gun, in the holster clipped to his pants, came out from under his shirt and swung sideways as his pants tore open. His vision cleared, he pushed the guy away at his front, and swung around to face the guy behind, who was staring at the gun. Jinny felt the weight of the gun hanging at his side, and saw his torn pants hanging there too, which pissed him off. Enough was enough. He grabbed the holster with his left hand, and pulled the gun out of it with his right. He looked at the guy who had ripped his pants, frozen at the unexpected sight of the gun. Who wears green pants and packs heat? Jinny racked the slide, raised the gun so it was positioned a foot from the guy’s face, and said, “My name is Jinny Blistov, and you ripped my pants. Prepare to die.” The Princess Bride was one of his favorite movies. And like Ignacio in the movie, he didn’t actually kill his opponent. But he sure scared the shit out of him.
That was the end of the brawl. He gathered the clientele into a tight group of chairs in the center of the room and asked them, one at a time, if they knew where the NNs were. One at a time, they shook their heads, no. He wasn’t sure he believed some of them, but he had lost some of his own steam, seeing as how he had to hold his pants up with this left hand while he pointed his gun at them with his right. He figured the show was over, and he didn’t feel like pursuing the interrogation. Somewhat anticlimactically, he turned and left, exiting the door through which he had entered. Outside, he walked past the mower that still was running, terrorizing the weeds below. He stood looking at it, then over to the shed attached to the building where the mower was kept. Inside the shed the bright red color of two or three five gallon cans of gasoline caught his attention, and his internal steam returned. They had ripped his favorite pants, after all.
Several hours later Gwen and Roger were watching the evening news. The lead story was about a fire outside of town. The reporter had positioned her cameraman near the wire fence that separated the interstate from the adjacent private property, at an angle that provided a shot of the big sign that said SYAMF, and the blackened remains of the building behind it. She was relishing her commentary, in which she said she couldn’t say the name of the establishment represented by the acronym on the sign, the name not being suitable for news television. She did say that most locals knew what the acronym stood for, and if you, dear viewer, didn’t, just ask around. She then interviewed a county deputy sheriff on scene, whose only comment was, “Good riddance.”
Gwen looked at Roger, and Roger looked at Gwen. Simultaneously they said, “That’s our boy.”
Chapter 43 – Jinny’s Story
Gwen and Roger got up early the next morning and fixed coffee. They had a long standing rule that they started their day with conversation. No newspapers, no phone calls, no daily to do lists, just a little conversation. They were dying to talk about Jinny, but they both knew it would be more fun to discuss his adventure with him and the rest of the crew, so they resisted the temptation to bring it up. Roger said he wanted to take a walk on The Battery and think about Renee Fleming. He loved to think about beautiful women. Gwen said, “You’re going to carry, right?” He nodded, and got his Beretta out of the gun cabinet in the study.
When he’d gone, Gwen sat thinking about Richard. The nitwits had said they would call yesterday with their ransom demands, and they hadn’t. Nor had Paul and Anna called to provide a status report on their music, without which she couldn’t make progress on the production planning. She took the dog out in the back yard and played with him for a while, then decided she needed company. So she called up the crew and asked them come for an early lunch. It wasn’t long before Slev and Constantine showed up, and then Guignard and Gale. She asked, “Where’s Jinny?”
Guignard said, “He’s at Pierre’s, getting a shave while they fix his pants.”
Slev said, “What happened to his pants?”
“He’s coming here when they’re done. He’ll tell you. He was involved in a little, incident, last night.” She paused. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.” This wasn’t the first time they had heard those words from Guignard. Slev asked what everyone wanted for lunch, and even though it was only 10am, she got stuff out of the refrigerator and cabinets. It looked more like a brunch shaping up than lunch. She chopped potatoes for homefries, while the others drank coffee, and tried to induce Guignard to tell about Jinny, but she wouldn’t. That told them it would be quite a story. An hour later Roger and Jinny entered by the back door, having met out on the street. They were welcomed by the smell of frying onions and potatoes, which always reminded Jinny of his childhood in Saint Petersburg. He had grown up eating potatoes twenty different ways, and half of them included onions, onions being cheap.
When everyone was seated around the kitchen table, Gwen said, “Who goes first?” looking from her husband to Jinny.
Guignard gave the order, looking at Jinny and saying, “Tell ‘em.”
“I had to have some work done on my pants. Pierre called in the tailor, and he fixed them while I got a shave. Well, two shaves.” And he stroked the area below his ears and around the sides of his neck.
Slev asked, “What happened to your pants? And why have a tailor fix them? Why not just buy a new pair? Would have been cheaper.” Slev, Constantine, and Gale had not seen the news story TV about the burning down of SYAMF.
“They’re my favorite pants. The green ones. Gwen picked them out for me, told me not to be afraid to be different. So I just wanted them fixed. Someone did something to them.”
“Who did something to them? Why?”
“A boy up at SYAMF. He tore them. Last night.”
Guignard said again, “Tell them.”
“I went up there and asked them if they knew about some NNs from Idaho. Said I was friends with them, and was looking for them. And then stuff happened.” They waited, so he went on, “I had a beer with the guys hanging out up there, but some of them had been drinking a lot, and one of them said he didn’t like my pants, and that I had to take them off and throw them in the trash. And, he tried to make me.” Jinny stuffed more potatoes in his mouth, keeping it shut while he chewed, that being one of the first lessons in high culture Gwen had taught him when they had become friends. They let him swallow his food, but their looks told him to get on with it. “He wasn’t able to make me do that, him not being a very good fighter, and when his friends saw him in a fetal position on the floor, then they tried to make me take my pants off.” He shook his head, no.
Slev said, “How many guys tried to make you take your pants off?”
“Only three.”
Roger said, “Did you pull on them?”
>
“Naw, not for three. Things would have been ok, except one of them sneaked around behind me. He’s the one that tore my pants. Grabbed them in the back and pulled on them. That’s when my gun showed itself accidentally, so I had to pull, or the guy might have grabbed it, it flopping around in plain sight. And that was pretty much the end of it.”
Gale said, “How many people were in the place?”
“Nine or ten, I think. About that.”
Guignard said, “Tell them about the line from the movie.”
“Oh, yeah, that was cool. I got to say my favorite line from the movies, from The Princess Bride.”
Roger said, “You were in a biker bar that doubles as a white supremacy hangout and clubhouse for neo-nazis, and you quoted a line from a romance movie that has a golden haired princess in it?”
“It was the perfect setup. I couldn’t resist. I pulled my gun and stuck it in the face of the guy who ripped my pants, and said, ‘My name is Jinny Blistov. You tore my pants. Prepare to die’. It was great.”
“Then what happened?”
“Then I sat them down and asked them if they knew the NNs, and they all said, no. And I left.”
“Did something else happen, then?” Jinny ate another forkful of potatoes.
“A little something, yeah. I went out in the parking lot, and I went to stick my gun back in its holster that was clipped to my belt, and my pants fell down, them being tore up.”
“And?”
“And then I remembered about my pants, and the good feeling I had from saying the line from the movie went away, and I got pissed about my pants.”