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Contents
Newsletter
About the Author
About the Publisher
Copyright
If you would like to use material from the eBook (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at info@280steps.com
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
About the Author
About the Publisher
Newsletter
Copyright
Cyril hadn’t given another thought to the boy in the baseball hat. He assumed the kid had gone back to play pool with his friends or drink beer directly from the pitcher. Cyril turned to the bar and tried to read the scrambled captioning for Monday Night Football. The players hit each other too hard, so he decided to go back to his motel room. He was halfway to the door when the girl stopped him.
“Do you have a second?” she asked.
She was dark-haired with quick, vital eyes, and she had a voice — low and tangy.
“What’s on your mind?” asked Cyril.
“That frat boy and two of his brothers are waiting for you outside.”
“The frat boy?”
“I just thought you should know.”
“Thank you.”
They stood for a moment together, neither one ready to end the conversation.
“Why did you call him a fuck monkey?” the girl asked.
“He was acting... like a fuck monkey.”
“I’m sure you’re right, but what do you gain from pointing it out?”
“It may have been a mistake,” he said.
The frat boy had banged on the bar with a spoon and made two loud yips at a shampoo commercial on the TV screen. Cyril hadn’t raised his voice; he’d politely told the boy to stop acting like a fuck monkey. He thought the boy had taken his suggestion and that all was well.
“So what do you think I should do?” Cyril asked the girl.
“Well, if you really want to impress me, you’ll go out the front and kick all three of their asses with a really cool expression on your face. But if I were you I would probably go out the back way.”
“Where’s the back way?”
“You have to go through the kitchen. Just walk straight through. The dishwashers will probably yell at you; by that time you’ll be out the back door.”
“I’ve got a third option.”
“What’s that?”
“We could sit down and you could tell me your life’s story. By the time you’re done, the boys will probably have called it an evening.”
“Don’t you have somewhere to go?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“You were leaving.”
“I was just going to go back to my motel room, maybe watch TV, maybe steal some soap.”
“You shouldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“They find you and they make you pay.”
“Tell me more about this,” Cyril said, motioning to a table.
The girl sat facing the bar, and Cyril sat across from her. He had a view of the door in case angry frat boys charged in, tired of waiting out in the chilly Iowa night. She told him her name was Willow and that she wasn’t with anybody.
“Is there a college nearby?” asked Cyril.
“Graham College. It’s not exactly Princeton. If you can pay tuition, they’ll probably let you in... I go there.”
“What do you study?”
“I’m undeclared,” she said, “You know, I could have told you that Graham College is the best school in the country. Then you would have thought that I was a genius.”
“Well, I have met some of your classmates,” he said, gesturing out towards the open room.
“That’s true. Did you go to college?”
“I’ve taken a few pottery courses.”
Students drank with young energy and bounced around the room; townies sat at the bar and corner tables. Willow and Cyril drank slowly and talked about themselves for an hour.
“It’s getting late,” she said.
“You have an early class tomorrow?”
“You have a motel room?”
“Yes.”
“I think that I would like to see it.”
“It’s about a 15 minute walk.”
“You didn’t bring a car?”
“I don’t drink and drive.”
“You’re a really good example.”
They had been walking almost a minute when they saw the Fuck Monkey approach with two of his frat brothers.
“Hey, you. Asshole, you,” he slurred his words, but he seemed reasonably steady on his feet. His brothers were bigger than he was. Cyril was average-sized and a few years older than an undergraduate.
“Go home,” said Willow to the boys.
“Okay, darlem. You just step back. I’m going to tear up your boyfriend here.”
“What’s darlem?” asked Cyril.
“I think he meant darling,” said Willow.
“I don’t need you to get hurt,” the boy said, still to Willow.
He stepped closer to Cyril. His brothers moved in a bit, but it looked like they were going to let the Monkey do what he could on his own before they stepped in. Cyril did a quick check of the two big guys, and the Monkey shoved him backwards.
“Come on, Les,” said one of the brothers, “Don’t play. Bring the warrior to him.”
“Warrior,” said the other brother in his deepest bass. It wasn’t clear that he respected Les.
Les came at Cyril with a big wild punch. Cyril stepped aside, and Les cursed and spun. Cyril grabbed a hold of Willow and tried to hurry her away, but the brothers blocked their path.
“Fight me,” cried Les.
“Look guys,” said Cyril, “This doesn’t make any sense. You’re all going to get thrown out of school. Think of—”
Suddenly the brothers began to edge away, holding up their hands and stepping backwards. Cyril watched, puzzled, and then he turned to see that Willow had drawn a gun.
“Go home,” she said.
“Bitch is crazy,” said a brother, but they had now turned and were leaving at a jog.
That left Les.
“Go home, Les,” said Willow.
Cyril was not without sympathy for Les’s evening: the unavenged insult, the traitorous brothers. Les’s eyes were drunk and scheming. He hadn’t given up yet.
“If he rushes you, don’t shoot him,” said Cyril.
“I might shoot him,” said Willow.
“Please, go home,” said Cyril.
“You don’t know who you’re messing with,” said Les.
“Do you understand that right now, she can shoot you and not go to jail for it?”
Les said nothing. The insane idea that had careened through his head seemed to have moved on.
“We’re going to walk away now. Please, don’t follow,” said Cyril.
And that’s what they did. Les slumped against the side of a building.
“Is it normal at your school for a coed to walk around with a handgun?” Cyril asked about five minutes later.
“A coed? What is that?
“A female college student?”
“Why is that a coed?”
“I guess when female college students were not all that common, the girls at coeducational schools were called coeds.”
“Well, that’s stupid. These days there’s a lot more girls than boys in school. They should call the boys coeds. Seriously, this place is like 70/30 girls. It’s horrible. And dicks like those guys can get women left and right, because what choice do we have?”
“And that’s why you carry a gun?”
“I’ve got a gun. I mean, aren’t you glad?”
“I suppose.”
“What were you going to do, make a little speech to the fraternity — You’re going to get in soooo much trouble.”
“There might have been more to my plan than that.”
“Well, I didn’t want to risk your pretty face.”
They kept walking, past the main business district and into the darker residential streets. Cyril’s motel was off a side road somewhere close by. He hoped he could find it in the dark, but everything looked very much alike. First he led Willow down the wrong street that ended at an empty lot.
“This is where you’re staying?” she asked.
“I think I’m on the next street.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were leading me down a dark alley on purpose.”
“Why, so you could shoot me?”
Willow smiled. They found his motel, a cheap little two-story chain: the Firstway Inn. He led her to his door, and she watched calmly while he opened it and turned on the light. The room smelled flat and dusty, and only one of the three overhead light bulbs worked.
Willow jumped on Cyril, wrapping her legs around him, toppling him onto the bed. She kissed his face and his neck then worked inside his mouth, biting his inner lip. They tore off their clothes quickly and tumbled off the bed, fucking like they were the only humans left in a world full of zombies. It was a fantasy Willow had sometimes — there’s nothing else out there except mindless death, and we are probably infecting each other. Cyril seemed to get it.
She felt a little lost afterwards — a base note of pleasure under a single shot of panic. Jesus, she thought, I could fall for a guy like this. And then she put on her clothes. When she got to her shoes, Cyril sat up.
“Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.”
Cyril started to get dressed.
“You don’t have to get dressed,” she said, “I just like to have clothes on.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Thank you.”
Willow put on her jacket, and then she pointed her gun at Cyril.
“I’m going to need all the money,” she said.
Saida was upset that a convicted sex offender had moved into the apartment complex. She told Marcus that the man, a short Asian named Danny Chin, had been looking at her.
“Looking at you?” asked Marcus.
“Yeah, all the way to the stairs. And then he made sure I went up first,” Saida said.
“Isn’t that being a gentleman?”
“No, it’s so he can look at my ass.”
“But you’re supposed to let a lady go first?”
“On level ground, not up stairs.”
“But you can look at a lady’s ass on level ground the same as you can look at it walking up stairs.”
“It goes upstairs, it comes right to eye level.”
“What does?”
“The ass. So he can bite it.”
“Did he? Did he bite your ass?”
“No.”
“Because if he did, then I’d go over there right now, kick in his door.”
“Well, all right. Fine. He bit my ass — took a bite like he was at a Taco Express, enjoying a meal.”
“He’s Chinese, why’s he eating a taco?”
“Chinese man can eat a taco. They own all the taco places.”
“Where? Where do the Chinese own all the taco places?”
“Are you going to do something or not?”
Marcus was a big, stupid-looking guy, but once you got to know him you realized that he wasn’t as dumb as he looked. A little bit after that, you realized that he wasn’t exactly a genius either. He was a sweet man, and he believed that he loved Saida very much.
But Saida had sacrificed for him, hadn’t she? She’d gotten into UMass Amherst and UMass Belmont. Amherst was a good school, big and full of life. Belmont was barely a step above a community college, out in the ugly armpit of New England. It was Marcus’s work that had brought them out here, so she’d settled for Belmont, where everyone drank hard and talked in that stupid accent that sounded fun the first time you heard it, but after a few weeks it turned into donkey. These people talked like they were donkeys. Saida was sick of all of it, and now Marcus was going to disagree with her about a sex offender?
Saida had tried to see if there was a way to get Danny Chin banned from the apartment complex — too close to a school or too close to a topless bar. But they were out in the middle of nowhere: a gas station, a warehouse, a quarry. Children weren’t allowed in the complex. If you had to put a rapist back into the real world, the best place to put him would be out here next to some rocks.
“Anyway, you’re always saying how there’s nothing but white people around here; now a man of color moves in and you want me to kill him,” said Marcus.
Saida took a moment.
“First of all, I don’t want you to kill him. I don’t even want you to hurt him. You just need to step up to him and let him know he better run and hide when he sees me coming, because I don’t need to see his god damn pervert hands. I don’t want to have to think about them.”
“Fine.”
“And let me see if I get you: I’m supposed to be happy that a Chinese pervert moves into the complex because... at least he’s a man of color?”
“You’re always complaining.”
“Complaining. How would you like to live in the ‘hood — whitest person you see is a half Puerto Rican? How would you like that?”
“I’d be all right with it.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Actually Marcus would do just great. Old black ladies loved him; he called them Ma’am and didn’t mind when they compared him to large animals. With his size and his Virginia manners, he’d be fine in Saida’s old neighborhood.
“You want to do that?” he said, “Go back to the Bronx — live in a project?”
“I never lived in a project, and I’m from Brooklyn. That’s where Chinese people own all the taco places. And, no, I do not want to go back. I just want you to take care of one little, dirty man. Can you do that?”
It was two days later that Marcus saw Danny Chin walking back to the complex. Danny wore a bright blue shirt and white jeans. He had a bounce in his step. Either his clothes were new or he used a better detergent than Marcus did.
“Hey,” said Marcus.
“How’s it going,” said Danny, with a smile, recognizing a neighbor.
“No. I need you to understand something.”
“Sure.”
Danny stopped and gave Marcus his full attention: he was ready to understand.
“You know my girlfriend?”
“No, who is she?”
“Short, African-American lady. She lives in the complex.”
“With you?”
“Yeah, with me.”
“I think I have seen her, yes. What’s her name?”
“Saida.”
Marcus had lost his menace again. It seemed pointless. Small as Danny was, why couldn’t Saida take care of it? It must be something like how she felt about water bugs. She could crush them herself, but she didn’t want to have to touch them.
“Anyway. So. She thinks you’re looking at her,” said Marcus.
“I’ve said Hello to her. She seems very nice. I hope I haven’t done anything to upset her.”
“You’re a sex criminal?”
Danny took a pause, not a guilty pause but recognition that this was heavy enough to stop the conversation for a moment.
“I’ve got a conviction. Yeah. I do. It’s not right how they railroad you,” said Danny.
“I don’t have time for that, but you’d better leave her alone,” said Marcus, going back on the offensive, but without any real heat this time.
“If that’s what you want, I will leave her alone,” said Danny.
“I mean that if you see her coming, you’d better hide around a corner.”
“Now wait a second. If I see her coming, the last thing I should do is hide around a corner. If you want, I won’t talk to her or anything, but as soon as I start to slink around like a criminal, that’s when the misunderstandings start.”
“We don’t need misunderstandings,” said Marcus.
“All right,” said Danny, “I respect this — what you’re doing. You a Redskins fan?”
“What?” Marcus glanced down at the old burgundy sweatshirt he was wearing, “Yeah. I mean, sure.”
“You watching the game tonight?”
“We don’t have ESPN, so I have to—”
“What? How can you not have ESPN?”
“Our TV is... it’s not important.”
“Kickoff is, what, 8:30? If you want, stop by. I’m 1K.”
Saida was still at school, at a study group where they pretended they were running a business and made displays on really shiny pieces of oak tag. Saida majored in marketing and she was starting to feel like she was doing straight-up retarded projects with a group of burnouts for professors who didn’t care. She wouldn’t be back until late. And that’s how Marcus found himself in the apartment of a sex offender, drinking Rolling Rock and watching Monday Night Football.
When Marcus was five beers in, he asked Danny about his arrest.
“It wasn’t right,” Danny said, without bitterness, more like he was describing a friend’s comic misadventures.
“They’ve got this thing up in Boston where they put a lady cop on the T — in a little tube top and short shorts. Then when some guy gropes her, they arrest him. I even knew about the program. I’d read this thing in The Globe about it; they even had pictures of these women, the bait. They were beautiful. I mean, they were the kinds of girls you had to say, What are you doing working for the Boston Police Department instead of — I don’t know — just sitting around and letting men buy you things?”
“So they showed the undercover cops in the paper?” asked Marcus.
“You ever been on the T?”
“I’ve never been to Boston,” said Marcus.
“So I saw this lady on the subway. And it is a train, you know? So there’s lots of starts and stops, and people do jostle up against each other — that happens. I saw this lady on the subway. Now, I’m not saying I didn’t stand near to her. And I’m not saying I didn’t hope that the motions of the train would position our parts in exciting alignment. I hoped for all that, but it really was some short stops that brought us together — mostly. Maybe I took the momentum and added my own ideas. But next thing I know six or seven cops grabbed me and booked me. Half that train was cops. And here’s the thing: she wasn’t even good looking. She looked like a Fraggle. She was all orange and shit.”
“A Fraggle?”
“She was like one of those puppets. Who would even think to press up against her?”
“I guess... you.”
“Yeah,” Danny laughed, “You got me there. So I went down because of some orange girl that I barely even touched. That’s how come I’m a sex offender.”
Marcus rose to get another beer for himself. He got up a little fast and had to steady himself against the flimsy wall of the kitchen. He wasn’t a huge drinker, and he had a lower tolerance than most people expected from a 270-pound man. I could probably punch right through this wall if I wanted, he thought. What was the pervert going to do, call the cops? If he punched through the wall then at least he could tell Saida that he’d done something. Maybe he’d do it later.
“That’s pretty rough,” said Marcus.
“And try finding a good job with that on your record.”
“How do you get by?”
“They’ve got some programs that give aid to sex offenders, so I’m doing all right off those funds, but I’ve set my sights a little higher.”
“They have funds for sex offenders?”
“You know, like war orphans and deaf kids — there are funds for all those people. We get them too. A wealthy sex offender died without any children; he left his money to the fund for the rest of us.”
“That doesn’t really seem right. I mean regular guys — who never touched a woman wrong — we have to work for a living.”
“Jesus, man. I’m kidding. There’s no fund for sex offenders. I’ve got some very serious cash flow problems. But luckily I know a way in to some money.”
“How?”
The question of How would hang in the air for the next few weeks. In the meantime, Marcus became a regular at Danny’s apartment, and he never got around to punching a hole in the wall.
It wasn’t right. It was all going to hell.
Duane’s left index finger still gave him a little pain when he gripped the steering wheel — likely the bone was broken, and the flesh was a nasty pulp. He didn’t think it was infected, though. It would all heal fine, but it was a reminder that things were going off the rails, falling apart.
The idea of seeing Pat made him sick, but Top had written him a stern text message: Make this meeting with P. Otherwise, he probably would have blown the whole thing off. Duane always heard people with real jobs complain that they had to endure meetings with incompetent coworkers and sit there listening to worthless noise without losing it. And that was exactly what he was driving to Newburgh for. It was going to be useless and stupid, and he wondered if he would be able to keep himself from doing something harsh. That would be a mistake; Duane understood that now, beforehand.
Pat and Top were both ex-army — buddies from those days. At least that’s the way Pat told it. It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d ask Top. It was hard to believe that Pat had been military. If that was what the army was coming to, we’d all be speaking Chinese in ten years. Hell, we’d all be speaking Swedish if we really had an army full of fucktards like Pat. Those Swedes could row over in a long boat, then just march to Washington, while Pat worked on a cigarette and grinned — I’m supposed to do something, bro?
Yeah, Pat was bad and getting worse. Duane had seen it before: users rotting out their minds. It wasn’t that Duane didn’t understand: heroin was wonderful, a delight, the only way this planet lets you know there is something clean and holy within reach. He’d take a weekend every now and then — make sure there was no serious work to do — and just relax. That was it, more or less.
But Pat Sajak had worn out the meager connections of his brain. He was left with greed, a streak of self-preservation, and a baffling sense of humor. And now Duane had to drive an hour to get scolded by this man who was actually the cause of the trouble? Was Pat really going to try that?
Yeah, his name wasn’t really Pat Sajak. That was just some hilarious joke that someone had come up with at some point, and now Duane sometimes had to tell people, with a straight face, that Pat Sajak would have 10 kilos in a week, or Pat Sajak would be coming to the meet.
He spat out the window onto the rusty iron bridge that took him into Newburgh. It was bad enough to have a two minute phone chat with Pat, but to have to drive an hour to sit down with that fuck monkey face-to-face?
Fuck monkey? Duane hadn’t said that in a while, maybe not since high school when he practically used it as Cyril’s name. Not that Cyril was a better name. Duane felt pretty lucky that his mother had gone with Duane for her first child and Cyril for her second. Looking down at the dark surface of the Hudson River, he thought of his little brother. Maybe it would be a good idea to call Cyril and tell him... what? Tell him he had a non-specific feeling of dread and that Cyril should stop working? No, let Cyril take care of himself.
Duane had gotten his little brother into the business, but Cyril was an adult, right? No one forced him to do anything. In fact, when you got right down to it, Cyril was the smart one — straight A’s and a college degree.
Duane could remember summer days, his brother sitting out on the sidewalk, reading in a beach chair. Duane would sneak up quietly and smack the book out into the street. So that guy, the brain, had made it through college in three years, then a so-so job, and then he just hit a wall. Duane had laughed hard when he heard Cyril was unemployed and trying to sell his furniture on craigslist. It was so funny that Duane had decided to go see the golden boy in his crap studio apartment. Duane drove up in a Saab; that’s what he had back then. It was a good car and not some flaming gangster-mobile like some of the other guys picked up as soon as they’d made a little cash.
“Cyril, there’s so much money out there,” Duane said.
Cyril poured himself a bowl of cereal and gestured listlessly to the box. Duane shook his head and put a hand on Cyril’s shoulder.
“You want to make some?” asked Duane, “Money?”
“How?”
“Are you scared of me — men like me?”
“Like you? Not really.”
“Why not?”
“Why would you do anything to me? Why would a man like you do anything to me?”
“They’re not all levelheaded like I am.”
“Okay, then we’re talking about men who are not like you.”
Duane smacked Cyril in the head — hard so it hurt, but also as a joke. Take that, little brother.
“I don’t need to be reminded of how smart you think you are,” he said.
Cyril cocked back a fist — the playfight continues? But Duane gave him a serious look.
“No. Do not.”
“Just kidding around,” said Cyril, sounding about seven-years-old.
“I’m trying to help you. I’m trying to do you the biggest favor of your life. So just listen — that’s lesson one. Some of these fuckers are a little psychotic. They just are. Most are more like me: you don’t give them any reason for agitation, then it’s smooth doing business. You don’t have to prove you’re the macho man with a steel cock. You know what I mean?
“Sure.”
Cyril fought the impulse to giggle.
“You’ve never even had a ticket, right?” asked Duane.
“No.”
“You’re a good driver with a clean record and a pretty, Caucasian face.”
“Thank you for saying that.”
There was a fairly strong resemblance between the two brothers, but it was easy to tell just by looking at them that Duane was the harder, angrier man.
“Sometimes it all just comes together,” he said, “You can say no. If you want to say no to me, do it now. But if you say yes, and I get you in — then you cannot fuck this up.”
“What are we talking about?” asked Cyril, still in groggy, breakfast mode.
“What do you think?”
Duane’s anger was rising again.
“Specifically, I mean.”
“Oh,” said Duane, weighing the question and finding it reasonable, “It’s just driving. But it’s important. And you’ll make more money than you would have even if everything had worked out in — botany school? Whatever you were doing.”
Cyril had majored in political science and then found himself with little interest in the field.
Duane had sold the job pretty hard, but he thought he’d also been honest. The money he’d been making had him feeling like he was a big deal, and when Pat Sajak sounded him out about drivers, he thought it would be a shame if his brother missed out on easy money.
As it turned out, the only time the brothers did anything together was when Duane brought Cyril to see Pat. It was just after one in the afternoon at a bar in Rockland County without windows. That was back when Pat Sajak was only mildly incompetent.
“This is your brother? Are you a puss like Duane?” asked Pat.
“Watch it,” said Duane.
“What, he can’t take it?”
“You insulted me, Pat Sajak.”
“How?”
Pat gave a stupid grin.
“Look, you wanted to talk to him,” said Duane.
“I’m supposed to just take your word?”
“No, he’s here — talk to him.”
Cyril still hadn’t said a word, but he looked up evenly at Pat.
“You can do this?” Pat asked.
“Yes,” said Cyril.
Pat nodded. Duane knew that a speech was coming.
“There’s no reason you should ever get picked up. It just shouldn’t happen. If you get stopped, take a ticket — that’s fine. If they want to search, tell them to get a warrant. If they don’t have one, do not let them inside the car. If they bring in the dogs and you get arrested, then just do the time. If you try to do anything else, we’ll kill you. You get that, right?”
“Yes,” said Cyril.
“That’s something you understand?”
“That is something I understand.”
Cyril was calm and his voice was deep and even; Duane was a little impressed.
“Okay. Good enough,” Pat shrugged, “You want to drive tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“Here you go,” said Pat, handing Cyril a cell phone, “Don’t let the batteries run out and don’t call anyone with this. We switch these pretty often, so you have to keep up. Can you handle that?”
“Yes, I can.”
“Okay, let’s go,” said Duane, and the brothers left the bar without a drink.
Usually at the end of a job interview there’s the opportunity to ask a few questions —what’s the policy on sick days; is there a softball team? Walking out to Duane’s car, Cyril realized that he had at least one important question.
“Can I stop doing it?” he asked his brother.
“What do you mean?”
“If I want to stop — can I just do that? Just stop?”
“Sure. What would be keeping you?”
“If I say — I’m out. They won’t get angry?”
“You haven’t even done one job, you’re thinking of quitting?”
“I’m just looking at the long term.”
“Good thing you didn’t ask Pat.”
“So I can quit if I want?”
“They can find other people. It’s not a big deal.”
“You’re sure?”
“No one reasonable is going to hurt a courier just for stepping down.”
“But some of them are psychotic — you told me that?”
And now Duane was a lot less impressed with his little brother’s cool.
“Look, Cyril, it’s possible that the first time you make a delivery that the guy you meet will decide to slice off your tongue and make you eat it. That could happen. This isn’t pre-school.”
“...Thanks, Duane. That makes it a lot clearer for me.”
Duane was about two seconds from throwing Cyril out of the car; sarcasm was something he really didn’t really need. But he calmed himself: Cyril wasn’t used to this kind of thing. Duane wondered if he’d just gotten his little brother in over his head.
That was — what — three years ago now? How time flies. Back then Duane thought the organization was tight, and the money would come in big, nearly regular chunks. But nothing ever stays the same. You always miss the high point. Yeah, Cyril would just have to take care of himself.