Rider

Rider is a heroin dealer, would-be robbery partner, and protégé of Raul whose unreliability repeatedly turns plans into potential danger. The narrator buys heroin from him when no other supply is available, but sees him as a source of trouble: Rider lies casually, entangles others in schemes, and tries to enlist the narrator in a killing. His role links the narrator’s drug use to a widening network of criminal obligations and coercive favors.

Identity and Characterization

Rider has a crescent-shaped scar running down the left side of his face, inflicted with a knife rather than caused by an accident. The mark accompanies a reputation for trouble, though the narration makes his conduct more defining than his appearance. Rider is described as someone who will lie about something as ordinary as the time, without apparent reason, and who draws people into bad situations hoping they will solve them for him. The narrator’s caustic judgment that Rider can scarcely look after himself sits alongside the consequential fact that Raul trusts him.

Rider’s assertions are not always convincing even when he insists on certainty. During a night spent driving with the narrator and Raul in search of a particular car, the group intends to rob its owner but never finds the vehicle. They go to the owner’s home instead, where Rider says the man is not there; the narrator hears uncertainty beneath his assurance. Raul accepts Rider’s account, as he has accepted other claims from him. The failed search gives a concrete instance of how Rider’s confident talk can steer the group without delivering what he promises.

Drugs, Debt, and the Proposed Killing

The narrator’s connection to Rider is partly transactional: when other options are unavailable, he buys heroin from him. It is also dangerous. Rider once asks the narrator to kill a man in Bath, Ohio, presenting the job as a way to earn ten thousand dollars. The narrator later learns that Rider himself owes the man a large debt and wants the killing to erase it; Rider had not disclosed that context when making the offer. The narrator refuses.

Rider continues pressing the proposal for nearly five months. When he later identifies a bank in Bath as a promising robbery target, the suggestion revives the narrator’s suspicion that the trip could become a pretext for the killing. The narrator refuses to go along with Rider’s Bath plan and says he will rob a bank downtown instead. Rider’s proposed robbery therefore carries a second, concealed possibility in the narrator’s mind: that the supposed target may be less important than the unresolved demand to kill the debtor.

Rider also tries to recast the killing as a matter of honor. He tells the narrator that a friend’s child’s mother and her son live with the man in Bath, who beats them. The narrator understands this appeal as an attempt to enlist his sense of honor in a cause Rider has pursued for months. The alleged abuse gives the proposal a new justification, but it does not erase Rider’s undisclosed financial interest or the narrator’s suspicion of his motives.

Ties to Raul and the Narrator

Rider is Raul’s protégé, a status that helps explain why Raul continues to believe him despite the narrator’s distrust. The narrator’s refusal to kill for Rider does not end their association: Rider remains part of the circle around drug supply and planned robberies. That continued contact shows how the relationship is sustained not by confidence in Rider but by overlapping needs, including access to heroin and the expectation of shared criminal work.

When the narrator prepares for a downtown bank robbery, he picks Rider up in the morning. Pistol is with Rider and brings a gun, while advancing the narrator two grams of heroin; the narrator says he will give Pistol some money later that afternoon. Rider’s presence in this arrangement places him within the robbery plan, though these scenes do not establish the eventual outcome. The narrator’s criminal plans, drug supply, and debts to associates are already entangled before the robbery begins.

The Planned Robbery and Its Tensions

Before the robbery, Rider tells the narrator that he and the narrator are the coolest white men he has ever met. After Emily returns to the university buildings, Rider asks to borrow the narrator’s phone. During the call he says he will go now, trying to sound untroubled and even pleased; the narrator can see that he is frightened. Rider then takes the driver’s seat while the narrator searches the back seat for something to wear. The narrator puts on Adidas sweatpants, a black fleece, and a ski mask, smokes another cigarette, and says he is ready.

At a later point in the same sequence, Rider does not move. The narrator says he has four hundred dollars and owes three hundred and sixty of it to Pistol, warns Rider that he can disrupt the plan, and offers to drop him and the baby off in his street. He also says that both he and Emily are beginning to feel sick, that he needs to obtain heroin and take it back to her at the university, and that he has already rescued Rider several times. The exchange reveals the immediate pressures surrounding Rider’s participation: the narrator is short on cash, indebted to Pistol, worried about withdrawal, and trying to keep the plan moving, while Rider’s hesitation threatens to make matters worse. The available account establishes the pressure and preparation, not the robbery’s final result.