Those drugs arent real, Sal McKraut maintains. They just look real. McKraut is a sweaty behemoth blocking my path to the kitchen. I could probably juke past him, but then what? Reasoning with him is out of the question. For several agonizing seconds we just look at each other, Sals sagging eyes dull and loose in their sockets. Behind him, the refrigerator drones on in a low, baritone buzz.
Defeated, I return to the living room, and Sal's right behind me. They arent real, he says. Trust me.
Trusting Sal McKraut at this point is simply too much to ask. Ever since I stepped through his door, passing beneath the rusted railroad spike he says a Peruvian whore gave him for good luck, Sal McKraut has been nothing but enigmatic and evasive. He answers seven consecutive questions in iambic pentameter, then suddenly shifts to haiku for the next four. Idiot savant or idiot? Autistic or artistic? I want to ask him. So why cant I? Maybe its the 14-inch awl he uses to pick his teeth, or the bruised, misshapen knuckles that jut from the back of his hand like a scoliosis-ridden spine.
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