the picture up so his mom could see it.
“Just a friend of your father’s,” Dorothy answered. “I forget his name.”
After a last look, and a feeling that he remembered the man in the picture from somewhere, he shrugged and looked for a place to deposit them. He settled on his mother, whose outstretched hand took them and slipped them into her pants pocket.
As he’d been standing here, he’d noticed the musty smell was much stronger.
“Do you have a leak up here?” he asked Dorothy.
“Not that I know of.”
CJ left the table where it was and started walking along the wall, skirting his mother’s sewing machine and a cardboard box filled with old clothes. The farther he went this way—in the direction of the living room—the fainter the smell was. So he headed back the other way, toward the part of the attic that shared an outer wall with his old bedroom. The smell was stronger in this direction, in the corner where Dorothy had piled George’s things.
He admired the temerity of his mom to hold on to the old man’s things like this, but it wasn’t lost on him that what he’d just experienced, the time he’d spent going through his own things, was all his father wanted.
Looking up at the roof, he began searching for signs of water damage. He was almost to the corner when he found it—a water stain spreading out above a beam. The sun was out today, but CJ knew that when it rained, water would drip onto the beam and pool until it began to spill over the sides. By the size of the water stain, and the damage the moisture had done to the beam, it had been leaking for a long time.
The smell was almost overpowering where he stood. He lowered his gaze, seeing that the leak was directly over the hostage possessions of his father. Because it was so dark, he couldn’t see past George’s golf clubs and a trio of boxes filled with only Dorothy knew what. He bent down and picked up the golf clubs, standing them up against a stationary bike. Then he inserted himself between the exercise equipment and the stack of boxes.
He was effectively blind, so he reached into his coat pocket for his keys, for the penlight attached to the key ring. He directed the narrow beam over the real estate at his feet, and what he saw produced what might have been the first curse he’d ever uttered in front of his mother.
“What’s the matter?” Dorothy asked him.
When CJ turned toward her, he saw that she hadn’t moved away from the steps.
“Well, a whole box of George’s clothes are destroyed,” CJ said. “And you may want to get a mold expert in here, because I sure can’t tell you if this stuff is toxic or not.”
From across the room, Dorothy nodded, a gesture that conveyed she knew there was more coming—that what her son had told her didn’t match the profanity.
CJ shook his head and released a deep sigh.
“The Winchester’s ruined,” he said. He ran a hand through his hair and shook his head again. “Man, is he going to be mad.”
Chapter 22
The Tragically Hip made their music as CJ sat at the card table that served as the apartment’s eating area. The green fabric of the table was ripped, and the chair CJ sat in wobbled whenever he shifted his weight, but for tonight it was the perfect setup.
He was one of those writers who subscribed to the school of thought that there were two atmospheres that facilitated writing. The first was that environment which the writer created for himself—the familiar chair, the right kind of pen, a cup of Sumatran coffee, black. By arranging these things the right way, the writer could coax the words out, get the story on paper with a minimum of fuss. The other atmosphere was the one in which it didn’t matter if all the writer had in his possession were a roll of paper towels and a red crayon; it didn’t matter if the chair was wobbly, or if the room was too cold, or if the Hip CD stuttered at the same spot on Track 9 for thirty-seven seconds. Still, the words came pouring out onto the page, unstoppable and yet often messy.
That was where CJ was tonight, although he did have the luxury of a good pen. He’d popped the CD in, grabbed a cup of Maxwell House, and sat down with a notebook