My face starts to calculate Pi

My face starts to calculate Pi. 'Uh - I ain't sure who she sent it to …'
'You have the password?' asks the guy. Fuck. I feel more people line up behind me.
'I better call and get it,' I say, shuffling away from the counter.
Folk look at me strangely, so I keep on shuffling, right out of the store; out of the freezer, back into the fucken oven. I have to get hold of Taylor. Maybe she didn't send it, once she knew about the password. I have no points left on my phonecard. I can't even call Pelayo. Vegas sputters and dies in my ass.
I walk up the boulevard until I find a phone. I don't know if it's like TV, where you can call anybody collect, from anywhere. I decide to call her collect. Sweat flows between my mouth and the operator when I talk. She speaks English at least. Then sweat runs between my ear and the operator when she tells me you can't call this mobile number collect. When I hang up the phone, sweat dammed on top of my ear crashes onto my fucken shoulder, then runs crying onto the road. Probably back into the fucken sea after that.
It pisses me the hell off, actually, that all the well-raised liars and cheats will go to their regular beds tonight, with no greater worry than what they can screw out of their folks tomorrow. Me, I'm stuck in Surinam with a bunch of criminal charges forming an orderly line back home. Anger fuels me back to the store, up to the agent's desk. Nobody else is around right now. The clerk looks up.
'I can't find the password,' I tell him.
'What's your name?'
'Vernon Little.' I wait for his eyebrows to blow off his fucken head. They don't. He just studies me for a moment.
'How much you expecting?'
'Six hundred dollars.'
The guy taps at his keyboard, checks his screen. Then shakes his head. 'Sorry, nothing here.' I pause for a moment, to calculate the depth of my fuckedness. Then the agent's eyes rivet to something over my shoulder.
I'm suddenly grabbed around the waist. 'Freeze!' says a voice.
Chapter 18
My ass jumps into my throat. I break the grip around my waist and spin toward the entrance, legs coiled like springs. Shoppers stop and stare.
'Happy Birthday!' It's fucken Taylor.
I spin a full circle, looking for the heavies who must be here to get me. But it's only Taylor. The clerk at the wire agent's counter smiles as she wraps an arm around my waist, and leads me shaking from the store.
'You didn't wait for the wire details, like the password, dummy,' she says.
'Uh-huh, so you hopped a fucken plane.'
'Language, killer!'
'Sorry.'
'Well I couldn't leave you stranded. Anyway, I'm bummed back home, and this is my vacation money - I hope you don't mind sharing. Here's three hundred, and we'll work the math out later …'
'I'll try to cope. How'd you know it's my birthday?'
'Hell-o? The whole world knows it's your birthday.'
The reality of what's happening starts to tingle in my brain. Taylor's here. I found a beach-house, and Taylor's here, with money. One thing to be proud of: I don't respond to the flood of joy-hormones, the one that makes you want to sniff flowers, or say I love you. I contain myself like a man.