“School holiday?” I asked. He looked up and took a long drag on his cigarette.
“No,” he said. He made it sound like a challenge. His narrow face was stiff and his cheeks were red. He took another drag and flicked the butt down the stairs. It landed at my feet and dribbled smoke.
“Something the matter?” I asked. I flattened the cigarette with the toe of my shoe.
He snorted. “Yeah, something’s the matter- with you. It turns out you’ve got a terminal case of asshole.”
“Sounds painful.”
Billy made a mocking smile. “I hope so.”
“Billy, what the hell is this about?” Billy dug in his back pocket and came up with a crumpled pack of Marlboros and a yellow plastic lighter. He pulled out a bent cigarette and lit it.
“I told you, it’s about you being an asshole. It’s about you saying you were going to find my fucking father and then up and quitting on us.” He blew a stream of smoke down at me and looked much like his mother as he did it. “That’s what it’s fucking about, asshole.”
I took a deep breath. “Who told you I quit?”
Billy scowled and nodded and blew more smoke in my direction. “My mom, asshole. My mom told me.”
Shit. I shook my head. “You had breakfast yet?” I asked.
Billy flicked a hand at me, as if he were brushing off a fly. “Don’t give me the fucking big brother act, okay? No more comic book talk, no more music, no more buds and pals, all right? Just keep that crap to yourself.”
I looked at Billy and he looked back, angry and a little scared. “I didn’t quit this, Billy.”
“Don’t bullshit-”
“That’s enough,” I said. My voice was low and tight, and it brought Billy up short. A quiver rippled through his lower lip and his eyes looked wet, but he didn’t look away. “I didn’t quit,” I said, more softly. “Last Thursday night, your mom told me she’d decided she didn’t want to go on with this. You’ll have to ask her what her reasons were and decide for yourself if they were good ones. But they were her reasons, Billy, not mine. I didn’t quit.”
Billy let out a long breath and ran the back of his hand over his eyes and forehead. “You’re so full of it,” he said softly.
“I’m not, Billy.”
He looked down and his voice got softer still. “Don’t bullshit me about this,” he said.
“I’m not.”
He shook his head. “Fuckin’ A,” he said. His voice quavered and his nose began to run. “Fuckin’ A.” He dragged on his cigarette and coughed and spluttered.
“Throw that thing out,” I said. “I’ll buy you breakfast.”
We went back to the Florida Room and sat in a booth. Billy ordered pancakes and French fries and a cream soda. I had coffee. He pulled a pile of paper napkins from the dispenser and blew his nose and wiped his eyes. There were big fans revolving on the ceiling. Billy tilted his head back on the banquette and watched the slow blades turn.
“She fucking lied to me,” he said, and managed a rueful laugh. “She fucking lied to me again.” The waitress brought my coffee and a can of cream soda and a glass full of ice.
“Does that happen often?” I asked.
Billy shrugged. “Sometimes… when it’s easier for her.”
“Easier than what?”
“Easier than explaining something or having an argument. Easier than the truth.” He poured a little soda into his glass and watched it insinuate itself between the ice cubes.
“What was easier about this?”
“It was easier than telling me why she doesn’t give a shit about finding him, I guess.” He filled his soda glass and drank some off and filled it again. He did this over and over, until the can was empty.
“Did you talk to Ines about it?” I asked. Billy shook his head. “Maybe you should. Is she usually straight with you?”
Billy spoke carefully. “Nes is no bullshitter.”
I nodded and his face relaxed. “You’ve known her a long time,” I said.
“My whole life, basically.”
“She does a lot for you guys.”
Billy made a wry smile. “My mom can find her smokes by herself, and her studio. For anything else she needs Nes.”
“Does Ines take care of things for you too?”
His smile warmed. “All the school stuff, and soccer, and when I go to the comics conventions- she does all that. Nes does pretty much everything that takes a grown-up.” Billy crunched on an ice cube and watched a very tall woman in a very small dress walk by our table. When she was out of sight he turned back to me.
“My mom gave you a hard time?” he asked.
“Pretty much,” I said, smiling.
“It’s like her best thing.”
“Is she that way a lot?”
Billy shrugged. “I guess.”
“With everyone?”
“Everybody’s eligible.”
“Including you?”
He shrugged again and gazed someplace over my shoulder. “Nes says it’s because she’s afraid of stuff, and that she needs to control things or something- I don’t know if I get it all. But Nes says when you fight back it just makes her more scared and she gets more pissed off and it all just gets worse. She says when my mom gets going like that you have to be sort of a chameleon; you have to blend in and fade away and not give her anything to hit at. Nes says it’s like mental kung fu.” He looked into his soda glass and blinked hard. “I’m not much good at it, though. I don’t see it coming a lot of the time, and mostly I fight back.”
I started to speak, but my throat closed up and I couldn’t. I drank some coffee and took a shaky breath.
“Does she give Ines a hard time too?”
“It’s different with Nes. She knows a lot of stuff- about painting and art and business things- and my mom respects that. And she knows Nes does a ton of stuff for her- for both of us. And, you know, they’re… together.” Spots of color came up in Billy’s cheeks and he looked over my shoulder again. “Besides, Nes is patient. And she’s really good at the kung fu stuff.”
He looked around the room and then stared down at his silverware for a while. The waitress brought another can of soda and refilled my coffee and went away. Billy’s eyes came back to mine, and there was a trace of embarrassment in them.
“She’s really not so bad, you know- my mom, I mean. She’s really smart, and she’s a great painter. Everybody says so- magazines and newspapers and all those collectors and stuff. And she can be really funny too. She just… has a lot of shit on her mind sometimes.” He nodded as he spoke, and guilt and pleading were all mixed up in his voice. I swallowed hard and nodded back and he smiled at me, relieved. I drank some more coffee.
“When’s the last time you heard from your dad?” I asked.
“Last time I talked to him was weeks ago, right before he left. I was supposed to see him, and he called right before and canceled.”
“What did he say exactly?”
Billy shook his head. “Mom’s the one who really spoke to him. By the time I got on the phone he was mostly full of his sorry, sorry, sorry bullshit. He said something had come up and he was going away for a while, and he said he was bad company right then anyway. He said he’d pick me up when he got back, and that we’d be spending a lot more time together.” The waitress came by again and slid a plate of pancakes the size of steaks in front of Billy. She put a plate heaped with fries alongside.
“Did he say what it was that had come up?” Billy shook his head and ate a fry. “Any idea why he said he was bad company?”
“Who knows? He’s in a bad mood like ninety percent of the time.” He laid thick ribbons of syrup over his pancakes and started eating.
“That business about spending a lot more time together- what do you think he meant by that?”
Billy washed his pancakes down with cream soda and took a breath. “I thought he was talking about the whole custody thing,” he said.
I hadn’t realized Billy knew about the custody battle. “Did he talk a lot about that?”
Billy’s cheeks colored again. “He used to. He used to say all kinds of shit about my mom- and Nes- until he figured out it was just pissing me off.”