Zoetrope: All-Story Extra: Weekend at Nguyen's

Weekend At Nguyen's

The rain has been falling in great sheets and buckets for weeks now. It'sgetting to just about everybody, yours truly included. My tent partner, SludgeRobinson, has hung a hand-printed sign by the entrance to our little abode thatreads: "Mud--It's Not Just For Breakfast Anymore" and frankly, he isn't too faroff the mark. We've been mired knee-deep in the stuff twenty-four hours a day,trenchfoot and jockrot have reached an all time high. Just yesterday, theyhauled Sean O'Malley off to the shrink shack after they realized he'd beensingin' that old childhood standby, "Rain, Rain Go Away" nonstop for 48hours.

While the docs are loading old Sean up on Thorazine, I'm thinking, what can youexpect from a guy who extends his tour six months to stay in this technicolornightmare? I mean, sure if the climate suits you and you're a complete moron,sign up for some more time, but spend it in Saigon as a pool lizard for a MACVrec center, or maybe get a job inspecting the girls who work the massageparlors and weenie whacker joints. But for Christ's sake, extend your tour tostay in the infantry? The guy had to be nuts.

There is absolutely nothing going on now and even Charlie has packed up hisshit and hit the road, presumably to wait out the worst of the rain. I'mdigging through my rapidly dwindling supply of C-Rats. All I can find is some"Ham and Motherfuckers" (the latter referring to the lima beans with which theham is entwined in a sauce of wallpaper paste), and a dented can of clingpeaches. I toss the ham and go with the peaches.

Sludge, good fellow that he is, offers me his last Tropical Hershey Bar, but Iwave him off. "Tropical," as that term is used by the famous chocolatecompany, means indestructible and you couldn't melt one of these suckers with aheli-arc welder. I tried one once, and I later came to understand why thevillage urchins would always give you the finger if you dared to offer them oneof these confectionery gut bombs. Prior to that time, I'd always thought thekids were just being little assholes like the rest of the Vietnamese.

Once again, I find I must sabotage my plans to eat a balanced meal, with oneitem from each of the five major food groups. The concept of food groups andnutrition hasn't even made a dent in rear echelon Army mess halls, let alonemade it all the way out here. This will make nearly 800 nutritionallydeficient meals in a row. I'm beginning to seriously worry about my health.It's bad enough having to worry about gooks, bullets, and pungi-sticks doin'your ass in, without having to worry about the shit you eat. Sludge says I'm awhiner and I stick a middle finger in his scruffy face.

'Climb this,' I tell him, 'and when ya get to the top tell 'em Groucho sentyou.'

Today, the first shirt is making his semi-annual pilgrimage through the muddysea of shelter halves to "see how his boys are doing." I tell him "not sowell," about thirty of us have died since his last little visit, and he writessomething down in his notebook. I'm thinking if I decide to re-up, I could bethe first thirty-year man who never makes it beyond PFC.

"I believe I'm about due for an R&R," I tell him.

"Do you now?" he says. "And where would you be thinking of going?"

He's actually acting kinda friendly for a change so I tell him Katmandu and hismood abruptly turns sour.

"The local drugs aren't good enough anymore?" he says.

"Come on, sarge," I tell him. "I need outa here. What's available?"

He scratches his goofy, egg-shaped head and reflects on this for awhile. Weboth know he'd like to see me gone as much as I'd like to be that way.

"I can get you a 3-day shot. Either Vung Tau or maybe Sin City."

Now, truth be told I was hoping for a little seven day jaunt to Sydney orMelbourne. Word was those tanned and blonde Aussie girls had a thing forAmerican GIs and they'd ball you 'til your brain tore loose and came out yournose. Then they'd drop you on the ground and go find someone else. Theysounded like the kind of women most men only dream of.

I've already done Vung Tau. It's a beach town on the South China Sea, theVietnamese equivalent of Santa Cruz, CA, where nearly everybody cruises alongpalm lined streets on motor scooters.

Actually, I'd found the place kind of depressing. In the Pacific, garbagethrown into the ocean always flows west. I know this to be a fact because mostof it eventually ends up on the beaches of Vung Tau. Saigon has to be mychoice. It's all that's left.

Two days later me and Tobias Sanchez are winging our way south in a ratty oldC-130 for our three days of alcohol-induced regeneration. Now I don't knowmuch about Tobias since he's the quiet type. He looks like Pancho Villa so Ifigure between that and his last name he's gotta be a Mexican. He appears toknow maybe five phrases in English, his favorite being "chure mon." But theladies really like him so he's a good guy to have around on a mission like thisone.

We arrive in Saigon and Tobias decides we're going first class so he has thetaxi driver drop us off at the Caravelle. From what I hear, you can find theclassiest whores in the whole city working out of this joint. They're mostlyEurasians. The typical combination is French and Vietnamese. Let me tell you,some of these women make Raquel Welch look like that skaggy lookin' broad onthe Beverly Hillbillies. I mosey on up to the rooftop bar, order a double WildTurkey, neat, and gaze out at the city.

They call Saigon the "Paris of the Orient," but I've never been to France(where the women wear no pants) so I can't make a personal comparison. I justnaturally assume Paris must be an extremely dirty city, where your chances ofgetting shot at any given time are excellent; a place where cigarettes areunnecessary since you can just inhale the automobile exhaust and get higherthan a kite and where everybody is always in one big fuckin' hurry.

About this time a lady starts coming on to me. She is everything I havepreviously described and more. Smooth, cream, and coffee skin, nice body,great tits.

"You lookin' for a date, soldier?" she says.

This catches me completely off guard since I didn't realize the concept ofdating had crept this far east.

"We're still talkin' about fucking once we get through the preliminaries?" Iask.

She smiles. "Of course," she says. "As long as you have plenty of money."

I notice that there's none of the usual "you numba won, GI" bullshit. Thislady just gets down to business and she speaks good English as well. Even so,I figure she must be pretty new at this since the words "soldier" and "plentyof money" should never appear in the same conversation.

"How much?" I ask.

"One thousand P," she answers.

Now before you get the idea that she's bargaining for a Golden Shower orsomething, let me explain that"'P" is the shit poor Vietnamese excuse formoney. Not piss but Piasters, and a thousand P is roughly ten bucks. I'mthinking she'd better be talking all night basket-fucks because this is aboutfive times the going rate.

Two hours later I'm lying in bed curled up to this great lady. Life reallyisn't so bad. We'd done it every way I could think of plus a few new ones thatshe came up with, and I'm hoping I can call up some unknown reserves so I canball her some more before she figures my time is up.

There is a loud banging on the door. Now I'm new in town, I sure as shit don'tknow anyone and Sanchez has gone to visit a buddy in Long Binh, so it can't behim. Just to be safe, I dig into my ditty bag under the bed and pull out myold friend, Mr. Browning Hi-Power.

"Who's there?" I ask.

"We come for girl, Mr. Mare-can GI. We come for your money too."

I look at my bunkmate and it appears that all notions of love have suddenlytaken a trip south. She now looks like the Dragon Lady.

"I hope you die, you American pig," she tells me.

Women. Can't live with 'em.

And most of the time you can't shoot 'em.

I've heard about these assholes. They call them "Cowboys." They're mostlyyoung Vietnamese draft dodgers who have a passion for strong-arm robbery andmurder.

"You gooks take one step over the threshold and Chiquita Banana here is agoner.'"

"What you say, GI?"

They'd never get it. I let the Browning break through the language barrier forme as I put five quick lead torpedos through the center of the door. There isa gut-wrenching scream and I push my lady friend onto the floor, then roll heron top of me as they return the fire. The bullets barely penetrate the door sothey must be using 22's or 25 autos. Real professionals. I let fly with theremaining eight shots from the Hi-Power which produces even more screams. Thenwe can hear the sounds of retreat, and after that . . . total silence.

A half hour later, I ask my companion to go check the hallway and while she's atad hesitant at first, with Mr. Browning's help, I convince her that it's theright thing to do. She opens the door and the hallway looks like the floor ofa meat market after an especially busy day. I mean there is blood everywhere.

Suddenly, people are coming out of the woodwork all yammering in Vietnamese.I'm wondering, where the Hell were these yobbos when the Charge At FeatherRiver was going on? The manager starts bitching at me about paying for all thedamage. I tell him if I had an American Express card, I'd probably put it onthat, but since I don't, he can just go fuck himself.

Check-out time, it appears, has arrived.

When Tobias returns, they boot his ass out, too. So we end up staying at a MACVcompound with accommodations for dog-faces like us who are on 'in-country'R&R's. It has one thing going for it: It's free.

Tobias's buddy has given him the skinny on a great little money-maker for thoseof us who are visiting town and on a tight budget. Remember that line fromThe Graduate where the guy takes old Dustin Hoffman aside and sayssomething like: "I've got just one word for you: Plastic?"

Well here in Saigon, the word is: Refrigerators. The gooks love 'em,especially those little Sanyo jobs that are just about the right size for acase of beer, and every GI has a ration card that allows him to buy just one.Of course me and Tobias don't have much use for such marvels of technologyseeing as how there aren't any electrical outlets in the walls of tents, sothis deal is like money from home. You can buy one for about fifty bucks andsell it on the black market for over twice that.

Tobias is concerned that it's all a big plot and Charlie is going to turn 'eminto booby traps or something, but I soon convince him that money is money andmoral conundrums be damned.

"What zot?" he asks.

We go in search of a dishonest taxi driver, which in Saigon is about asdifficult as finding marine life at Sea World. We find one with the highlysuspect name of Arnold. He wants to be our friend.

He carts us over to the fabled Cholon PX where we each make our littlepurchase. Arnold's taxi is some little French piece of shit, a Citroen Ithink. No way will it hold us and two refrigerators, so he hires a pair ofcyclos to help us get the job done.

Now the cyclo is one of the great wonders of modern transportation. It mustrank up there with the steamboat and the automobile in terms of raw innovation.It consists of a trashed out motorbike with a large basket mounted on thefront, about the size and shape of a small bathtub. The passengers ride in thebasket and the driver, who basically can't see shit, aims the vehicle in thedirection he wishes to go and mows down everything in his path that can't jumpout of the way in time.

We load a fridge into each rig and then jump on ourselves. Arnold followsbehind as we dart and bob through the side streets of Cholon, which appears tobe a slum of Herculean proportions. Most of the houses look to be made out ofwire, junk wood and the kind of cardboard boxes that washers and dryers comein. There is a feeling of high adventure and foreign intrigue in the air, andI don't like it one bit. The feeling is intensified when we are stopped by apair of the infamous White Mice. I'm convinced that our shit is cooked andit's 'Leavenworth, here we come. The White Mice are the Saigon City Police andthey are rumored to be a nasty bunch. They are both dressed in uniforms ofstark white with matching pith helmets, so you don't need to be any too brightto figure out how they came by the name.

Tobias suddenly bolts and heads for a nearby alley and for some reason, I dothe same. We run like we're trying out for the Olympics, down back streets,into hovels and through outhouses, all the while having no idea what we'redoing or where we are. Five minutes later, we're panting and ready to puke,but now we know where we are. We're fuckin' lost; that's where we are.

"Why did you run?" I ask Tobias.

"I'm Chicano," he says. "We always run for the border."

This makes absolutely no sense to me and I slowly realize that we have donenothing wrong, at least not yet.

By some miracle, I find our way back to our starting point. I get a suddenshot of courage and I'm about to tear into these two albino piss-ants when Irealize they are no longer there. In our absence, Arnold has stepped in tosmooth things over on our behalf. It appears that while the White Miceespecially dislike Americans, they have nothing whatsoever against our money.We deliver the contraband fridges with no further problem and we are nowofficial black marketeers.

We decide to celebrate our new status with a meal and set out to find someplacethat serves a decent steak. We are told there is a restaurant near theAmerican Embassy that features western food. It is all the way across town,and Arnold is suddenly in a crappy mood.

We arrive a half-hour later. Now that he's gotten what he wants out of us, heis all business and this "friends" shit is out the window. He wants ten bucksfor the taxi ride. I tell him he has two choices: He can either leave withoutthe ten spot, or we kill him right now and he still doesn't get paid. Then wesell his taxi for five bucks to the next zipperhead who comes along. He startscalling us names and flips us the bird as he drives away.

"You live in a democracy, courtesy of us, asshole," I yell after him. "Writeyour fuckin' congressman."

The restaurant looks like something out of rural Wyoming. The walls arepaneled in knotty pine, the chandelier is a wagon wheel with fake kerosenelanterns set every couple of feet around its circumference, and the waitress isblond and American. We order the 24 ounce Porterhouses along with bakedpotatoes and matching pint bottles of Jack Daniels.

An hour later, the steaks are served and long gone. The Black Jack is about tojoin the steaks and I'm feelin' almost human again. I light a cheroot, put myfeet up on the table, and close my eyes. It seems like barely a moment passesbefore me and Tobias are both on the floor, a knee jerk reaction to the massiveexplosion that comes from across the street. As we find out later, a gook on amotorbike has sailed a satchel charge into a crowd of outdoor diners.

We head over there posthaste to see if there's anything we can do. I have toadmit, being a grunt in a line company has few advantages unless a person has avery sick mind, but still, there are a few. The nearly indescribable carnagethat we've come upon is old hat to us. We've seen it, and worse, a dozen timesbefore. There are bodies, as well as body parts, strewn over a wide area.

We spend no time with the dead and the soon to be dead, but concentrate ourefforts on those survivors who appear to be salvageable. I holler to a waiterhiding behind an overturned table and ask him to bring all the tablecloths andtowels he can find and make sure that someone has called the authorities. ThenTobias and I set to work.

A few of the injuries are relatively minor, but most are in the serious tohorrendous category. One guy, a soldier who doesn't look old enough to playhigh school varsity basketball, has an arm that is barely attached to hisshoulder. I bind it up with a tablecloth to slow down the bleeding, but hecalls out in his pain and fear, "My arm! I'm going to lose my friggin'arm!"

"It's not nearly as bad as it looks," I tell him, but I'm lying through myteeth. The fact is, it's worse. Mercifully, he passes out from shock and I goon to the next casualty. This one is a woman dressed in fatigues with railroadtracks on her collar. A captain, no doubt a nurse. Her eyes and limbs seem tobe intact, but she is bleeding from several large shrapnel wounds. She haslost a lot of blood, but she is conscious. I use some towels as compresses andI try to stop the bleeding.

"My husband," she says. "We were sitting together. Just got here today.Please, my husband."

There are several bodies close by and I'm hoping to God that none of them turnout to be her husband. Hell, I'm hoping they're nobody's husband, or son, orfather.

"I think we pulled him away, ma'am. You just rest easy until the docsarrive."

The MPs and ambulances arrive at the same time and a dozen medics start tendingto the wounded. We aren't needed any longer and I'm glad. Tobias and I crossthe street, finish the Tenessee whiskey we'd left on the table then orderanother bottle and finish that too. I truly hate this shit.

The next day is January 30, the eve of the Lunar New Year holiday, or Tet.1968 is, I think, the year of the monkey, which when you think about it seemsto make a whole lot of sense. This fuckin' place is a regular simiancircle-jerk. I decide I'm going back to the Cholon PX to buy a case ofCheerios, so I can provide a nostalgic box of Americana for all my buddies backat Chu Lai.

I get there about ten in the morning and I can't believe what I'm seeing.There are American women everywhere. While many are far from being beautyqueens, they still bring back strong memories of home. I push my shopping cartthrough the crowded store and load it up with a ton of shit I know I'll neveruse.

By-and-by, I strike up a conversation with a decent looking, dishwater blond inher mid twenties. Turns out that most of these women are the wives of civilianengineers and other Americans who are working in Vietnam, and for whateverreason they all have PX privileges. I waste no time telling her what's on mymind and while she is reluctant at first, I think my 20-year-old hard-bodyfinally sways her. That and a few little promises I whisper in her ear havingto do with my twelve-inch tongue, that is harder than cold-rolled steel. Thisis a blatant exaggeration of course, but my older brother once insisted thatwomen love to hear that stuff. According to him, you were only supposed toexpose your three-inch model once you were "in the goods" because by that timeit wouldn't make any difference.

We leave the PX to find an appropriate love nest.

We wander through the streets of Cholon, which is the Chinese section ofSaigon, where only the day before Tobias and I had been cruisin' with ourrespective refrigerators. I slip 200 P to a taxi driver and tell him what Ineed. I guess he thinks I'm weird because he hooks me up with a weird,combative, and wholly unattractive laundry girl who does a little fleshpeddling on the side. Out of a fucking tree house, no less.

She wants 300 P for a piece of ass, which is fine by me. She can remain avirgin, I tell her. I just want her place for an hour or so for the statedprice. "No," she says. "That be 500 P."

I don't argue with her. I just want to get laid, American style. We climbinto the tree house on a rickety ladder and get down to business. Her name isPenny and she looks great without any clothes on. Creamy shoulders, uprightbreasts with hard little nipples, long smooth legs. I'm really getting intoit, literally, when there's a big commotion down below. Gunfire, peoplescreaming bloody murder. Just like home. An average day in New York City.Penny, however, is getting paranoid. She starts putting her clothes back on.I am totally bummed out.

"Look," I tell her, "there's nothing to worry about. This shit goes on all thetime. We're in Vietnam, for Christ's sake."

I can see by her look of stark terror that I am not getting through. Shestarts whimpering and I absolutely cannot abide whimpering women. I'd ratherbe dealing with multiple root canals.

We climb down from the treehouse and I have her back to the PX in record time.I offer to have the taxi drop her off wherever she lives, but she just wantsout. There are no good-byes, she just bolts out of the cab. This doesn'tstrike me as strange seeing as how there were never any hellos to beginwith.

I have already forgotten her name.

When I get back to our cozy little compound, Tobias is all excited. He has meta girl. Big deal, I'm thinking. I met a girl today too, but you don't see mejumping up and down.

"No mon," he says. "Theese ese legitimate deal. She ain't no punta. She liveshere in Saigon."

He says this like it's highly unusual. I mean if she lived in Charleston,South Carolina, that would be unusual. But we were in Saigon. Most of thepeople here were from here.

Anyway, we have been formally invited to a family sit-down dinner. I get outmy best "civvies": Brown, bell-bottomed cords, Justin roping boots, and acotton shirt with bright paisley patterns all over it. All I need to completethe outfit are some love beads and maybe some flowers for my hair.Fortunately, these items I do not have. Tobias doesn't seem impressedwith my outfit, but he has the decency not to say anything.

We arrive at the address Tobias was given about six that evening. While thehomes in this area wouldn't cut it in Beverly Hills, it is clear, nonetheless,that we are in the high-rent district. Not a bar or whorehouse in sight. Noshoeshine boys, or street urchins hawking Coca-Colas. Even the local rats haveapparently been trained to keep a low profile.

The girl, it turns out, is about sixteen and she comes from a family of devoutCatholics. I'm thinking, if Tobias is having any thoughts of getting somenookie out of this deal, he'd best be forgetting it. Papa-san is anywhere from35 to 90, it's hard to tell. He bows and bobs up and down, all the whiletelling us how much he loves Americans in a language that bears a vagueresemblance to English.

With Mama-san, there is little room for doubt. She is 90 for sure. Her skinand complexion would make a prune jealous and her teeth--those that she hasleft, anyway--are colored a rich black, proof positive that she's beenrelentlessly invading the family betel-nut stash.

I soon find that I have made a grave error. The woman I had seen wasGrandma-san or Methuselah-san but certainly not Mama-san. The real Mama-san isan absolute knockout. As an added bonus, her teeth look almost normal. Shekeeps winking in my direction and I'm trying to figure out if she's coming onto me. I finally decide she isn't, and it's one of those weird Asian culturalthings. Like the Vietnamese men who walk around Saigon holding hands thataren't really a bunch of fags. It's just a cultural thing. Sure. Okay.

We make small talk as best we can and it is real small. My command ofVietnamese is limited to a handful of words that might work wonders in awhorehouse but are unlikely to be of much assistance here. I decide there is agreat deal to be said for silence.

The rest of the family consists of two younger, snot-nosed little kids who areconstantly pointing at me and Tobias, and laughing. They are the kind ofchildren who would be totally obnoxious in any ethnic setting.

We sit on the floor as servants bring in the first course. A noxious odorsuddenly invades the room, and I am positive some miscreant has hurled a stinkbomb into the house as a form of protest against the current festivities. Onceagain, my senses betray me for I am smelling dinner. It is some kind of fishstew, and not the water buffalo shit and monkey entrails that I firstsuspected. I'm thinking I'd rather walk point for a week than eat this stuff,but my good manners and genteel upbringing get the best of me. The foodactually isn't half bad. We wash it down with large quantities of "33 Beer,"and when the evening comes to an end we have succeeded in once again gettingblind, shit-nasty drunk, while learning absolutely nothing about Vietnameseculture. They have to pour us into the cab, but we still rate the evening as ahuge success.

I never thought I'd be around to see the end of the world, but when I suddenlyawake about 4 a.m. I figure that's what's going on. All Hell has broken looseand people are running around like lunatics, wearing helmets and flak jackets.M-16's are everywhere. These aren't trained infantry soldiers we're seeing.They're cooks and clerk-typists and other "Remington Raiders" who couldn't tellcombat from a cow's ass. They appear to be re-enacting the Gunfight At The O.K.Corral. Maybe even indoors.

Tobias and I decide to take our chances in the streets. We latch onto a pairof M-16's that are temporarily unattended as well as a pack full of loadedmagazines.

We leave in a large hurry.

We are witnessing, as we were later to find out, the start of the Tet Offensiveand let me tell you, it is a sure-fire winner. Weapons are going offeverywhere--AK's, M-16's, M-60's, M-79's--while overhead, armed Hueys aremaking 120 knot gun runs right through the middle of the city.

"Theese iz wot I call a war, mon," says Tobias.

Before I can answer, around the corner come four dinks, all dressed in darkclothing and carrying weapons of one kind or another. I'm not sure if Tobiashesitates, but I know I sure don't. I let 'er rip with a 20 round magazine andbetween the two of us we get them all.

We cautiously approach them, but they are all dead. One has a briefcase andthere is little doubt that we have stopped a "sapper team." The explosives thatthe briefcase contains probably could have destroyed a good-sized building.

Not far from the Presidential Palace, we are stopped by a group of MP's. Theirleader is a mean looking 1st Louie.

"Whadda you Bozo's think you're doin'?" he says.

"We're fighting a fuckin' war, sir," I tell him. "We're soldiers. It's whatwe do."

"Okay, smartass. What unit you with?"

I can't believe this asswipe. I stand ramrod straight and salute. "Company C,435th Mess Kit Repair Batallion, sir!"

Before he can even react to my insubordination, an errant rocket fired from ahelicopter gunship explodes about a hundred feet to our left. We all decide,the Lieutenant included, that this is a good place to be from. Wescatter like ball bearings dropped on a concrete floor.

Two blocks later, we drop into a nasty scene. A VC machine gunner has a squador more of GIs hopelessly trapped by his withering fire. They are so squeezedin they can't even fight back. They will all be dead shortly if we don't dosomething about it.

"Tobias," I say, "this is a classic 'sneak in the back of the building and mowdown the assholes who are parked in front' maneuver we are facing here. Anyquestions?"

He shakes his head. My army training has not prepared me for this kind ofassault, but I am silently grateful for my years of outstanding juveniledelinquency when we used to do this kind of thing all the time. In myneighborhood, we couldn't rot our minds out watching television all day becausenobody could afford one, so sneaking through abandoned buildings was part of agame we used to play with local law enforcement officials. We fondly calledit, "Ditch The Fuzz."

We find a back entrance and go inside. There is really no need to be silent,the noise is so intense. Kate Smith could sing "God Bless America" at the topof her lungs and no one would ever hear it.

There are two VC guarding the machine gunner, but they both have their fingersin their ears when they first see us, and the hangdog look on their faces asthey go for their weapons in desperation says they know they are a millionyears too late. We cap off a magazine apiece and the noise level immediatelydrops about a hundred decibels.

The machine gun nest is no more. We call to the trapped soldiers and they getup slowly as if awakening from the dead. They come over to thank us.

It turns out they are from a company in the 101st Airborne that was carted infrom the north by chopper just after the battle began. My unasked questionconcerning how they could have all blundered into such a situation is soonanswered. Not a single man, their squad leader included, has ever seen asingle day of combat before today.

I shake my head.

If the folks at home only knew.

As the day wears on, the fighting, at least where we are, diminishes as moreand more friendly troops are brought in and the few remaining VC are rootedout. Since our R&R is officially over, we work our way back to thebarracks to make arrangements for our return flight home.

It is raining again and my body as well as my gear is wet and soggy. We havemade contact with the enemy three times in the week since Tobias and I returnedfrom our R&R and we haven't lost a single man. The first shirt's beenthreatening to make me a buck sergeant, but I told him I was having troubleenough with the awesome responsibilities of being a PFC so he just let itgo.

But as I lie on my wet sleeping bag, I feel a sudden chill come over me and ithas nothing to do with the damp weather. No, this chill stems from a fear thatis slowly beginning to get the better of me and I have no idea what I'm goingto do about it.

For the first time in my life, I realize that I am highly skilled at something.I kill people for hire and I am very good at what I do.

I think of Sean O'Malley, the retard who refused to go home, and suddenly Iknow for a fact exactly what it is that's bothering me.

I'm afraid that I'm actually beginning to like this place.

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