Read Online Rage Is Back (9781101606179) by Adam Mansbach - Free Book Online

puddle on the floor.
    I reared back and kicked him again, hard in the soft parts. He balled up, clutching at himself, eyes clenched, and I gave him another, heel to vertebrae. The stink was inside me now, pushing its way back out through my pores.
    The ugly truth is this: I stomped the everloving shit out of that man, with a fury I’d never been able to wrap my hands around before, a fury that had been floating through me for years in wisps and rumors. I stomped him for being Billy and for not being Billy. For his trespasses, and so that if my real father ever returned, I’d already have offloaded my hurt feelings on this doppelgangly cocksucker and could, I don’t know, roll out the crimson rug and give the man a hero’s welcome.
    Tears and snot were pouring out of me and spattering onto him. I’d switched legs, the right fatigued, the left awkward and ineffective. Which might have been the idea, if there was an idea. I suppose I knew that when I stopped, I’d have to make some kind of decision: to walk away, to help him up, to find out—how’s the song go?
Who is he, and what is he to you?
    He didn’t make a peep throughout the stomp-down—further provocation for your boy, a final round of silence-as-guilt and judgment-in-absentia. It must have been my own subverbal utterances or the slap of rubber against flesh that brought good old stockbrokin’ Patrick out into the hall, crinkling his cute little button nose and demanding to know what the hell was going on.
    I stepped over the body and loped toward him. It took Patrick all of three seconds to announce that he didn’t want any trouble, and reach for the door he’d just heaved wide.
    I thrust my shoe against the jamb just in time and there we stood, slivers of me and Patrick visible to one another and the kind of smell people like him pay big dough to avoid wafting right into his sanctuary and nestling in the fibers of his Restoration Hardware couch. Patrick yanked stupidly at the doorknob. If anything, he should’ve been trying to kick my foot away.
    â€œGet out of here,” he said. “I’ll call the cops.”
    I’d been planning to nice-guy him, but when a cat like Patrick starts invoking the police, your best bet is to play to expectations, become the thug he sees rather than confuse him with politeness.
    In case this all sounds calculating and calm-under-pressure, let me assure you that I was a quivering wreck in need of a hug and two-and-a-half thorazines, and alpha-maling Patrick was like kicking a cat after you’ve been ass-raped by a gorilla. Yes, I’m from Brooklyn, and yes, I do illegal things and threaten to smack people and harbor homicidal revenge fantasies. But until that day, the only beatdowns in which I’d ever partaken had been intellectual, or as recipient. I’m no hardrock. I’m a nerd with swagger, one of those rodents or moths or whatever who knows how to secrete a pheromone that tricks predators into thinking I’m something else and deciding there’s probably a dude farther down the late-night train car who’s more muggable than me.
    I pushed my way inside the condo, grabbed the cordless off the marble kitchen countertop, and ripped the battery out of the back.
    â€œNo cops,” I said. “Give me your cell phone, Patrick.”
    His eyes saucered. “How do you know my name?” I could see the home-invasion nightmare centrifuging into his cerebellum like a movie newspaper. As if anyone would take the trouble to go unwashed for months just for the sake of luring this schmuck into the hallway and jacking his plasma screen.
    â€œWhat, all black people look the same to you? I’m your marijuana delivery man, jerkoff. Now help me out here.”
    He peered at me. “Mike? Jesus, what the fuck?”
    â€œWhat the fuck is, I gotta get that guy out there cleaned up. Help me haul him to your bathroom.”
    To his credit, Patrick