I use the opportunity. We’ve been to this ’Outlet before, of course; I know some of the personnel. I wheedle with a guy named Tony until he lets me use his phone. I ping Brett’s number, nervous, chewing my lip. It’s been a week since I last saw her. This time I can barely talk after she answers and I identify myself. But she takes charge. She tells me where, then asks me when.
“After my father goes to sleep.” I make a guess at the time.
She purrs me a goodbye, and I give Tony back his pinger. I feel like I’m floating. I also feel like I’m about to puke the rice and liver I just ate; but I don’t. When Dad reappears, I have to hide how giddy I am. For one sudden frightening moment I hate him, totally, indescribably.
Because I’m going to have to sneak around him. Because he would call what I’m-hopefully- going to do a sin.
But the hate passes, and he’s just asshole Dad again. We head out to the plaza.
* * *
She hands me a slice of pizza-out of a box, not out of the trash. I grin, and squeeze the five packets of ketchup I’m carrying in my coat pocket onto it. One of the others at the squat starts to say something sneery, but Brett whaps him on the head with an old flyswatter she’s playing with. Everything she does is beautiful.
It’s late, after midnight, but everybody’s acting like it’s the middle of the day. The room is “furnished” with junk, though the junk’s not bad. There are places to sit, to lie down. A lamp burns. Of the half dozen people gathered here, I know Brett-of course-and one other, from the group that was hanging out with her in front of the pharmacy. The rest are hoodlum types, but more or less friendly. They’ve got marijuana and beer. I’m the youngest.
Inevitably a cigarette gets offered to me. I’m sitting next to Brett, and I look to her. She does this easy roll of her shoulders. “If you want, Bright.”
But I think-or think I think-that she means I should take the toke. So I do. It’s not as bad as I expect it to be. It hurts my lungs and my eyes water, just a little, but I don’t embarrass myself.
Everything is more alive in a sleepy way after that. The room in this derelict building glows with warmth and safety. I can actually feel the soapy freshness of my skin from the shower at the Handoutlet earlier. My appetite comes surging back, but it’s just another interesting sensation, something to enjoy. I snuggle closer to Brett.
She puts her arm around me, and the world soars.
Later, we go outside together.
Even though I’ve imagined about sex a lot, and I’ve fantasized intensely about Brett, I’m so shivery and disconnected that I can’t get hard enough to get the condom on. We’re standing up in a recessed doorway. Visible over the half-collapsed wall of the building opposite is an actual rotting old-time billboard, not a holo. It says you’re born, you live, you die. so drink budweiser.
But again Brett is nice to me. Her skirt is up around her waist, and my pants are stretched between my knees. She says, “Just go ahead, cutie. I mean, there’s a cure now, right?”
I’m amazed at how long it takes me. Five minutes into it she clenches and lets out this babyish squeal. I think I’ve done something wrong-I think I’m doing the whole thing wrong-
but she smiles dreamily and encourages me with soft murmurs. Finally it happens. I like it. But what I like more is hanging in her arms afterward, with my face buried against her bare throat, breathing in her smell.
I sneak back to Dad and get back into my sleeping bag. He’s turned away; he doesn’t move; I can’t see his face. I’m sure he knows. I’m sure he’s watched me every second tonight, just the way it is in the stories he used to tell the family, and which he now tries to tell to strangers.
* * *
What Dad is doing is proselytizing, a word I learned when it was still an impossible mouthful for me. Anybody can believe whatever they want. Obviously. Any person can think any thought they like. Try and stop them. But to pray out loud in the presence of others is to commit assault. You can do serious jail time.
Even so, even though everybody knows how illegal it is, Dad has something of a following. As his staunch lookout, I’ve watched some people return deliberately to where he does his stuff. They’re seeking out his words. Maybe those words are familiar to some of them; others, maybe, are hearing them for the first time and are captivated. The words stopped making sense for me months and months ago. Dad might as well have been talking about faeries and mermaids. Crazy fucker.
But I’ve got a new life now, one I’m living on the sly. I’m happy, or at least entertained; and that feels good. I smoke marijuana convincingly, and I’ve had sex with Brett four times. I love her.
Dad catches me coming back one night. We’ve got our sleeping bags unrolled under a defunct loading dock. He pushes up on an elbow, and I see his eyes in the moonlight falling between the broken boards overhead. I freeze, more rattled in that instant than the first time Brett and I did it in that doorway. I reek of pot smoke, the brand that Brett likes.
There’s sadness in his eyes, and I realize he used to look at Adalia this way in the weeks before she took off.
If he calls me a sinner, I promise myself, I’ll tell him to piss off. I’ll say it to his face, finally. I crouch there over my bag, unable to move.
After a long while he says, “Cedric, can you go get me my eyedrops tomorrow?”
I forgot he was running out. In a quavery little voice I say, “Sure, Dad.” I get into my bag and zip it up. Colors are still bouncing around inside my head.
Dad reaches out a hand and gently pats my leg. A few minutes later I hear him softly snoring. I don’t sleep until the moon is going down. That night I dream vividly about Mom, for the first time in a year.
* * *
The next time I go to the squat, Brett isn’t there. She hasn’t answered when I’ve pinged her. One of the regulars comes over and tells me she’s back with her boyfriend, who has an apartment. I’m not invited into the room with the lamp and the junk furniture and the beer and smoking.
It’s like a punch in the chest, and I feel my heart sort of buckling; but even as bad as it is, I know in those first few seconds that it won’t kill me. I’ll deal. I will.
But I really want to smoke. I wander around the streets awhile. I’m still amazed how different this part of the city is in the deep night. Soon I bump into somebody I remember hazily from the squat. He’s my age, but he’s got a hard knowing face and a missing front tooth. I go with him to a car abandoned in an alley. We get into the back seat of the old algae-burner whose tires are gone and share a smoke, different from Brett’s brand, harsher tasting. Even the pleasant disorienting effects are blunter, more like a dose of medicine.