He remembered that the girl had asked if he was a troller. “What’s all this troll stuff?” he asked.
“You know, trolls.”
“Like monsters that live under bridges?”
“You got it, Duke. Under bridges, under boardwalks, on the beach, everywhere. They’re like cockroaches. They hide in all the dark places, then they come out and get you.”
“That’s fairy-tale stuff.”
“You calling me a fairy?” Cowboy elbowed him and laughed.
They trotted down the concrete stairs and Jeremy nodded toward his chained bike.
“We’re not talking fairy-tale trolls,” Cowboy told him. “We’re talking bums, winos, space cadets, like the buttwipe tried to hit you up for change before I came to your rescue.”
“He was a troll?”
“Durn tootin’.”
Jeremy stopped beside his bike and dug into his corduroys for the key case. There was no other bicycle in the rack. “How’d you get here?” he asked.
“Walked. You oughta walk too, next time.”
Next time!
“When’ll that be?” he asked, trying to control his excitement and sound nonchalant.
“Who knows? Tanya, she’d be at it every night if Nate didn’t keep her in line. So she’ll be rarin’ to go by tomorrow, I reckon.”
“Count me in, okay?”
“You betcha, Duke.”
Smiling, Jeremy crouched to open the padlock.
“But lose the bike,” Cowboy told him. “Never know when we might have to vamoose fast. You don’t want to be tied to something like that, you might have to leave it behind.”
“I’ll walk, next time.” He pulled the chain free, wrapped it around the seat post, and locked its ends together. Then he rolled his bike backward out of the rack. “Maybe we can meet and come down together.”
“Sorry, man. You’re okay, but you ain’t no Liz.”
“Hey, that’s all right. No problem.”
They started off side by side, Jeremy rolling his bike.
“What is it that you do, anyway?” he asked. “You know, when you meet over here?”
“Have us some fun.”
“Are you…trollers?”
“You got it, Duke. They’re the trolls, we’re the trollers.”
Jeremy nodded. All his guesses, he realized, had been wrong. Even the crazy ones.
“So what you do,” he said, “you go hunting for them?”
“Fishing’s more like it. Trolling, get it? We just put out the bait. We worm the hook. Tanya makes a right fine worm. One of them comes along and bites, we reel him in. Then we have us some fun with him. Or her.”
“You beat them up or something?”
“Or something.” Cowboy turned his face toward Jeremy. The brim of his hat hid his eyes, but his mouth was a tight line. “You got a problem with that?”
“Me? No. Fuck ’em.”
The mouth tipped into a grin. “Figured you’d see it that way, Duke. I can always tell. I saw the look on your face when that scum on the boardwalk went sucking up to you. You damn near crapped your skivvies.”
“Hey, I wasn’t—”
“Yeah, man, you were scared brown. But that wasn’t all. You looked like you wanted to rip his heart out and shove it up his Rio Grande.”
Jeremy smiled. “Really?”
“You know it, man. And that’s how the rest of us feel. Those maggots, they make your skin crawl, and they got no right messing with you. They oughta do us all a favor and crawl in a hole and die.”
“But they don’t,” Jeremy said.
“Shit, no. What they do, they crawl right up out of their holes and get in your face. ‘Got a quarter, friend?’” Cowboy mimicked in a withered, whiny voice. “‘Poor me, I ain’t had a bite to eat in a week. Can y’spare two-bits?’ And you just know the creep’s gonna touch you if you don’t come across with the coins.”
That’s just how it is, Jeremy thought. That’s exactly how it is.
“Know what I say?” Cowboy asked.
“Fuck ’em.”
“I say, ‘No quarter, troll.’ Do you know what that means, ‘no quarter’?”
“He isn’t going to get any money off you.”
“More than that, Duke. More than that. No quarter.”
Ten
“Baxter.”
“Huh? Whuh?”
“Wake up.”
Moaning, he opened his eyes. The motel room was dark. He was lying on his side, Kim’s warm body curled against his back. “What is it?” he mumbled.
“Let’s get up,” she whispered, her breath tickling the nape of his neck.
“Huh? It’s…middle of the night.”
“It’s a little after three,” she said.
“Jesus.”
“Let’s get up and go out, okay?”
“Go out?”
“Down to the beach. We’ll have it all to ourselves.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“It’ll be neat.”
“Neat. Forget it.”
“Please?” She brushed her lips against his neck. Her hand roamed down his chest and belly, caressing him. “It’ll be so romantic. We’ll watch the sun come up.”