PIGGS - A Novel with Bonus Screenplay by Neal Barrett Jr Page B

the kitchen at Wan's, squatted in the corner stuffing rice in his mouth, rice from last night or the night before that, shoveling that rice, gulping water from a glass, rice falling out of the corners of his mouth.
    "Mahn, you making me sick, you know dhat?" Ahmed said, "I am raised in the focking desert, we got better manner than dat. What you do, man, pissing ever'body off, why these som'bitches lookin' for you?"
    "Rhino coming in?   I don't want to be here, he's coming in.   Rhino going to go right to Cecil, tell him where I am."
    "Me, I am going to Cecil, tell him where you are, you don' get outta here.   Gimme the bowl, you got enough of thees crap.   You going to be 'sploding like a boomb, you know dat?   You know what is happen, dey throwin' rice at the weddings?   The pigeons is eating the rice, dey drinkin' some'ting, dey 'sploding.   Jus' like dat."
    "That's rice hasn't been cooked, you fucking raghead.   If it was, 'bout a million fuckin' chinks's be exploding every day."
    "I am cooking Al Denny.   You cooking dat way, you hardly cookin' at all."
    "I never heard of nothin' like that."
    "This is because you a fockin' waiter an a deeshwasher, Jhack.   Fockin' waiter don' have to know 'bout Al Denny or nothin' else.   Gotta carry plates an' shit, dat is all you got to know."
    "I kicked Cat in the balls.   Last night at Piggs.   I didn't mean to but I did."
    "Shit, man..."   Ahmed slammed his hands against his head, slammed his head twice.   Rolled his eyes, did his Arab act, said "faya-baba-daba," or words to that effect.
    "This is a bad t'ing to do, I t'ink he goin' to kill you for dat.   This is what they doing in my country, mahn, only there doin' it twice."
    Jack was beginning to think Ahmed was right.   All that rice, he was swelling up fast. Not to the point of explosion, but close enough to throw up, or something worse than that.
    "You ever been to Canada?   I'm thinking another country's the way to go now."
    "I am t'ink you maybe right," Ahmed said.   He washed Jack's bowl and put it on a stack.   Anybody wants to look, nobody's used a bowl, all the bowls are in a stack.
    "I t'ink I would go somewhere else.   Is fockin' cold in Canada.   I am t'inking Whatamala, mahn."
    "What?"
    "Whatamala.   Is hot, mahn, you don' freeze you ass off, you got a beach down there."
    "I don't think so.   Everyone down there's a Mescan or something close. I wouldn't like it at all."
    Ahmed laughed.   When he laughed, Jack could see his bad teeth.   He could understand that.   You wouldn't have a lot dentists, out in the desert like that.   You're a dentist, you can do a lot better nearly anywhere else.
    "What you don' like, Jhack, is people who maybe got a name like Ricky Chavez, somethin' like dat.   Maybe someone got a bank or somet'ing, is liking someone you are liking too."
    "Hey, just can that kind of talk, okay?"     Jack pulls himself up off the floor, which isn't easy, his stomach is cramping up fast.
    "I thought we was some kind of friends, Ahmed.   I'm not talking 'bout friends that like each other, I'm talking the other kind that don't."
    "I t'ink that's what we got."
    "Yeah, well you don't show it much.   I come here thinking I can maybe talk to somebody, all I'm getting is rice ain't even hardly cooked.   That and shit 'bout Ricky Chavez and that other part I don't appreciate."
    "Don' be getting you hair up in the air, Jhack.   You maybe t'inkin, Ahmed, who is not my friend, he is tellin' Cecil, he is tellin' Cat, Jhack is livin' in the doggie place, he is livin' under Piggs.   You t'ink I tellin' them dat?   You hurting my feelings, Jhack, an' I don' 'preciate that."
    "What?   I ain't living in no dog place, what you talking about?"
    "Hey, I see you comin' out the hole, like the rhabeet or somet'in, Jhack.   I know there is the Gino's Fine Fish Restaurante before the Piggs, and the Sunset Vet before dat.   I know these t'ing because I am cook for the Gino's and putting the puppy