She Has A Broken Thing Where Her Heart Should Be - J.D. Barker Page 0,18

after her shift the following day and didn’t say anything until we got home. Then she pulled the money from her purse and showed it to me. She thought Mr. Krendal left the package for her. If she told me aliens beamed it into her locker from their mothership circling the Earth, I would have been happy with that explanation, too, as long as she didn’t suspect the windfall came from me. She said she confessed to Mr. Krendal she was behind on the rent and needed an advance. He told her he didn’t do loans or advances. If he helped her out, he’d be obligated to help everyone out, and times were tough. She believed he left the money anonymously simply to avoid potential problems with the rest of his employees. When she thanked him for the money, he simply said, “What money?” and returned to the grill. Sometimes unspoken words say more than an entire conversation.

When the second envelope arrived, I again wrapped the cash in newspaper and placed the money in Auntie Jo’s locker. Again, she suspected it came from Mr. Krendal. She was no longer behind on the rent and considered giving it back. I told her sometimes it rains, we should save it. She tucked the money away in the back of our freezer wrapped in aluminum foil with MYSTERY MEAT written across the package on masking tape.

With the arrival of the envelopes that followed, I hid the money in my underwear drawer. I didn’t want to risk Auntie Jo attempting to return it to Mr. Krendal again, and she no doubt would. Auntie Jo had her faults, but she was a proud woman, and taking charity wasn’t too far off from panhandling in her book. If money got tight again, I’d find another way to get it into her hands.

I looked up from my post beside a large granite obelisk to see Dunk wheeling around the corner on his BMX bike. He wore no jacket, only a Run DMC sweatshirt and jeans. As he crossed through the cemetery gates, he backpedaled, engaging his rear brakes, locking the back tire, and skidded sideways to a controlled stop a few inches from my feet.

“What exactly are we doing here?” He dropped the bike in the grass and leaned against a tall black tombstone, realized what he was touching, then took a few steps back, shoving his hands deep in his pockets. “You know I don’t like this place. Cemeteries creep me out. Haven’t you ever seen Night of the Living Dead? Romero doesn’t live far from here. For all we know, he got the idea for that movie when one of these stiffs made a grab for him right where we’re standing.”

“Well, he lived to tell about it.”

Dunk’s eyes narrowed. “Or did he? Have you ever seen him? He looks like a zombie.”

“Zombies aren’t real.”

“If there are zombies anywhere, they’d be here in Pittsburgh. This place is a shithole,” he said. “Chicago was a happy place. Look at the films set around Chicago—The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles. In Chicago, we had Molly Ringwald down the road in Evanston. Nothing bad ever happens in Evanston.”

“Anthony Michael Hall could easily be a zombie. That Ducky kid, too.”

He thought about this. “You got me there. They’re some creepy-looking dudes. Molly’s a fox, though. I’d do her.”

“You don’t even know what that means.”

“Of course I do. A gentleman never kisses and tells, though. You’ll have to fumble through the art of love all on your own, Mr. Thatch, now that you have a girlfriend.”

I had told Dunk everything.

He knew about my first meeting with Stella through the incident with the old woman. I didn’t know what else to call it. The incident seemed right. He knew about the money, too.

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Whatever, Romeo. Is she here?”

I didn’t need to check the bench to be sure she wasn’t here, and wouldn’t be, until next August. I gave up attempting to find her any day other than August 8, and that day was still very far off. “No, I haven’t seen anyone.”

“Then why are we here?”

I needed to know more about her. I need to know something about her. Lately she seemed to occupy nearly all my waking thoughts, and I figured it was because I had so many questions. If I answered those questions, if I figured out who she was, maybe I could get past this. Maybe I wouldn’t want to see her so bad. Maybe I wouldn’t bother