Before I could say anything about the husband comment and judging people by their appearance, although there was some truth to it in this case—quite a bit of truth—there was a knock. Brightening, Cal vaulted out of the chair toward the front door. “It’s the pizza genie. We won’t have to walk four miles to get some after all. That’s better than seven wishes.”
“Cal . . .” I was about to remind him, but he was already peering through the blinds. We couldn’t know who might be standing on our porch. Monsters, Sophia’s exes (worse than monsters), Sophia’s victims with baseball bats and vengeance on their mind, cops. Social workers—the list was long and not good. Not good in any way whatsoever.
“It’s just a guy in a fancy suit with a cool car. A really cool car. He looks lost.” Leaning closer to the window, he reconsidered. “Not lost, but he looks like he doesn’t want to be here.”
If he had a nice suit and an expensive car, chances were high that Cal was right. He didn’t want to be here and wasn’t here on purpose. I stayed on the couch, but kept my eye on my brother as he opened the door and my hand on the handle of a switchblade I hid under the well-worn cushion of the sofa. All that Cal knew about hiding knives, he’d learned from what I’d taught him and from watching me from a very young age. Monkey see, monkey do. Monkey do, monkey survives.
I couldn’t see the man but I could hear his irritated voice in answer to Cal’s less than polite and borderline hostile “We don’t want religion. It gives us hives. Go away.”
“I am not offering religion, you incredibly rude creature. I have a flat tire and a dead cell battery. I need to borrow your phone.”
“We don’t have a phone.” Cal scratched the back of one calf with his foot, his tone implying that was the most stupid request he’d heard in all of his eleven years.
“Of course you have a phone. Don’t be absurd. Everyone has a phone. Fetuses are issued one with a friends-and-family plan two months before they pop out of the womb. Are you after money? You are rude, but hustling me for money does make you a con man after my own heart. I’ll pay you to use the phone.” The irritation was now smoothed over by a mellow flow of amusement that made me think of a symphony’s rich sweep, the velvet thrum of a satisfied cat’s purr, the warmth of a fire in a huge hearth in an expensive house. All good things, all comforting things. The best con artists had voices like that. Our mother sounded like that—to everyone but us.
Cal had grown up listening to her voice pouring the richest of verbal chocolate, sex, and brandy over marks. He was immune to it. He switched feet and scratched his other calf, squinting in suspicion. “I’m eleven and you want to give me money? Are you a pervert?”
The amusement vanished as the unseen man squawked much like a startled rooster. I knew the sound as we’d once squatted at an abandoned farm for three months. “No. I am not a pervert.” There was a pause. “Technically . . . no, that’s only been with consenting adults, always has been, which is legal or should be. Therefore not a pervert.”
With a very obviously unconvinced expression as he loved nothing more than poking people, mentally or physically, Cal crossed his arms and looked up and down at the man that I couldn’t see. “Your clothes are kind of fancy, like a pimp in those old cop movies. You don’t belong in this part of town and you’re giving away money. Yeah,” he announced his conclusion, “you’re some kind of weird door-to-door pervert.”
“Pimp?” There was an audible grinding of teeth. “Have some respect. This suit is Versace. I’m not a pimp and I’m not a pervert, you foulmouthed little . . . oh.” The exclamation was ripe with surprise and what I thought sounded like eagerness. “I know you. I know you. Where’s your brother? May I speak to him?”
“How do you know I have a brother?” Cal wasn’t playing anymore. The suspicion was real and I was already moving, the switchblade hidden in my hand.
“You always do. Or a cousin or a best friend bonded by blood. Something of that dramatic overwrought nature. Someone who is virtually attached to you at the hip. Let me speak to him. He’s invariably more reasonable.”
“Nik, the pervert wants to talk to you.”
“And I am not a pervert,” the man declared. I was at Cal’s side by that time to see him when he said it.
He had wavy brown hair, green eyes that every chicken saw right before red-furred jaws snapped their necks, a mobile face, and a wide grin that could’ve sold pornography to the Pope. A con man through and through, but from his clothes and car—a screaming red Jaguar—a much more successful one than Sophia. There were all kinds of con men. He could be a politician or a talk show host or a car salesman.