In the closet, he found clothing hung in perfect symmetry on hangers arranged from light to dark. On the floor of the closet sat a single cardboard box. Inside that box, he found twelve ashtrays hidden beneath a dozen paperbacks—most likely, the missing ashtrays from the apartment. Apparently, the boy thought he could convince his aunt to quit smoking by hiding them. Clever. Childish, but clever.
Preacher returned everything as he found it and closed the closet door.
His eyes drifted over the room, the neatness of it. Everything in its place.
He had been a boy once.
Boys hid things.
He turned back to the bed and lifted the mattress, his eyes lighting up at what he found.
Pressed between the mattress and boxspring was a notebook of some sort. He retrieved it and flipped through the pages. Not a notebook, a sketchbook, containing dozens of drawings, drawings of Stella.
He lowered the mattress back in place.
The drawings were crude, but better than most. Far better than Preacher could ever draw. Exceptionally better than expected from most children. The last sketch in particular, Stella smiling with the glint of the sun in her eyes, that one was good. That one was real good. The boy had drawn it with a black ballpoint pen, a medium that didn’t allow for mistakes.
This had to stop. Things were getting out of control.
Preacher sat on the edge of the bed, dropping the sketchbook beside him.
What did the girl see in this boy?
Why him?
He was a nobody, a future rat to run the maze. His life would come and go in a blip. Most likely he would not attend college, would not obtain even mediocre success. He was destined to a life of labor and an early grave, so why him?
Preacher took his Walther PPK/S .380 from the holster slung over his left shoulder and held the weapon in his hand, absentmindedly unscrewing the silencer, then tightening it back up. The weight of the gun, the heft of it in his hand, the smell of the oil, these things all helped him focus, helped him concentrate.
He could kill the boy. He might have to at some point, he was sure of that. Why not now?
He could wait right here and put a bullet into the kid’s brain when he returned from the cemetery, the aunt, too. Preacher had no qualms about killing kids. He had killed his share in the past. The only difference between a child and an adult was time. They would be done with this, then. The whole sordid mess would be behind them, and they could move on.
There would be repercussions.
Preacher scratched at his chin with the barrel of the gun.
3
We were late for our shift.
It was my fault.
After the woman left, I sat on the bench, completely dumbstruck. My mind buzzed and I couldn’t stop shaking. Each breath seemed to catch in my throat and hold to the sides, unwilling to be expelled.
Even now, as I kept pace behind Auntie Jo, my heart beat with such a ferocity I thought it might crack out from behind my ribs and land with a thud somewhere ahead of us on the broken sidewalk.
“Are you coming down with something? You don’t look too good.”
I nearly told Auntie Jo she didn’t sound too good, and it was true—she made a strange wheezing sound as she walked, like air passing over wax paper. Every few steps, she punctuated this with a moist cough. This didn’t stop her from smoking, though. “Maybe I should drop these things off in our apartment. I could take a vitamin C.”
“I have some in my locker at the diner,” she said. “Can’t afford to get sick right now, neither of us.”
Although she didn’t say anything, I knew she hadn’t paid rent for August yet. Eight days late. Anything past the fifth would also include a late fee. I wasn’t sure how much that would amount to. All I knew was that it was more than we had. I could return the Walkman. I could try to give her my savings again, but she never took it.
We pushed through the door of Krendal’s, twenty minutes late. The diner was packed. Mr. Krendal stood at the griddle in the kitchen, his eyes locked on us through the pass-through at the back of the counter. “Josie! Get your apron on, we’re getting slammed!”
Although not even five o’clock, someone sat at every booth, table, and stool. About a half-dozen people stood around the front door, waiting for something to open up. Lurline Waldrip was behind the counter, wiping up what looked like a coffee spill. She looked up at both of us, shook her head, then went back to it.
I saw the woman’s coat first.
When you bus tables, you quickly learn to seek out dirty dishes and glasses upon entering a room, hone in on them like a radar. My eyes began that involuntary exercise the moment we stepped inside, taking in the people second, and the various eating utensils, plates, and bowls first. Full versus empty, half-full waters in need of refilling. Her coat, though, her coat caught my eye.
I saw the white coat draped down over one of the stools at the counter, and all other sights and sounds left the room as my eyes followed the lines of that coat up the stool to the woman sitting atop it with her back toward me, her long, white hair falling over her shoulders. A newspaper sat folded neatly beneath her left hand on the counter, and I watched as she raised a coffee cup to her lips with her right.
She must have felt my eyes on her, because she turned around, spinning slowly on the edge of the stool. I think I stared at her for a full ten seconds before I realized this wasn’t the woman from the cemetery, Ms. Latrese Oliver, as she had called herself, this was someone else, someone I had never seen before.
I pushed passed Auntie Jo and ran toward the bathroom. Somehow I managed to close and lock the door and get to the toilet before my meager breakfast and lunch came back up.
I stayed not only for my shift but through the end of Auntie Jo’s shift, too. Mr. Krendal told me I could go home more times than I could count, but I just couldn’t. I didn’t want to be alone. The rush didn’t end until after 9 p.m. Lurline said it was because it was Friday, payday for most, and half the city decided they didn’t want to cook. She said a pocket full of cash led to the trifecta—hot meal, bar, strip club for nearly every single guy in the city, of which there were many. I knew what a bar was. There were three on every block. I had my suspicions about strip clubs, too, my limited knowledge having come from Dunk’s slightly less limited knowledge. Auntie Jo tried to keep up with the crowd, but she was moving slow, and Lurline stayed more than an hour after her shift to help out.
We had left the windows open, and some of the papers from the dining table had blown around the apartment. I scuttled around and picked them up as Auntie Jo turned on lights, closed both windows, and dropped down into her chair. “I’m getting too old for this.” She pulled off her shoes and rubbed at her swollen feet. She then counted out her tips and swore under her breath.
“What’s wrong?”
“We’re still thirty-eight short for rent. I thought for sure…” she trailed off, closed her eyes, and pressed her calloused palms against her temples.
I made six dollars in tips. I placed the money in her hand. She opened her mouth to argue, then smiled weakly. “You’re a good kid. I’ll pay you back, every cent.”
“Hang on.” I ran to my room to get the rest from my savings. She’d take my money now, and I wanted to give it to her. I lived here, too. I wanted to help.
I saw the envelope on my bed when I turned on the light.