me to be hanging out in one place night after night, you know. Considering the circumstances.”
Both of us were looking straight out over the lot now, showing no interest in each other’s faces.
“You thinking about running, Colin?” I said.
“Shit, no.”
“If Richards is going to grab you up, she’ll find you anyway. You know the drill.”
“Too fucking well,” he said, popping the handle and stepping out.
“And if she gets you here, I’m your alibi,” I said. “I’m trusting you.”
“Yeah.”
He closed the door and I watched him walk in the direction of the movie theater and disappear around the corner.
CHAPTER 19
That was it. She’d hung up on him and that was just over the fucking line.
Damn it, he thought. He’d had hopes for this one. He might even have been in love with her. Of course, he thought, he could have been in love with the others, too. But, shit. Why couldn’t they just do what he asked them to do instead of turning on him? He knew Marci needed him. He could see it in her eyes when he told her how beautiful she was and when he had to protect her like that time with the jerk boys, Thing One and Thing Two, on the street that day. She was a little freaked out by that, he could tell when he got back into the car and her mouth was hanging open: “Jesus, Kyle. What did you do to those guys?”
What did I do? You stand up for your girl when a couple of ring- nosed, fake-leather twerps insult her on the street and you get questions? Shit, they were lucky it hadn’t been dark. It had been hard enough for him to hold back from ripping that little shit’s earring out. But he knew that might have sent the twerp to the hospital and he would have called his mommy and she’d have filed a complaint. But Marci had settled down after he told her she was too special to him to let anyone diss her. Later she even laughed when he gave them the Dr. Suess monikers. “You’re crazy,” she said and he agreed and they had crazy sex that night. So why the hell couldn’t it just be good like that all the time? No. They always had to start bitching. You give and give and they take and take and then they start telling you what to do. They always gotta try to run you.
He was driving out west. It always made him feel better when he was in the car when he was pissed. He made a rolling stop at the Hillsborough light onto 441 and punched it north. The car in front of him pulled to the shoulder when the driver saw him flying up in the rearview. Fucking right, he thought, rushing past, checking it in his mirror. Some people did the right thing. They recognized their place in the world.
He had known his place since he was a kid growing up in Oak Park in Chicago. He could still remember that day in fifth grade, that pasty-faced teacher with the flowery, down-to-the-ankles dresses and the perfume that smelled like the thick, hot summer lilac bush outside his mother’s bedroom window. But that day was winter because they were inside in the gym and the time for P. E. was running out and they were trying to get one shuttle run in before the bell rang. Just one. He’d been ready for at least five minutes when the other idiot kids tried to figure out what three straight lines were, Christ! He’d spit in his hands and wiped the dust off the bottom of his sneakers so they’d grip on the tile floor and he knew he’d have the fastest time. But there she stood explaining for the third time that you had to pick up the first eraser and bring it back to the line and set it down, not throw it down, and then run back and get the second one and then race back to the starting line. OK, OK, Jesus! Let’s go. But there was always some shit-head talking or pushing in line or asking if they had to set the second eraser down, too. So she started into the explanation again and he could see they weren’t going to have enough time and “Come on! Let’s just go!” he’d yelled and Christ you’d have thought he’d smacked her in her old, powdery face.