But the street stayed dark, as did the Salinger house. When I had the truck down the street a few yards, I jumped in and turned the key. The engine roared to life.
I should’ve taken off then and there, but I stared back at the big white house that had been my home for six years. The old ache filled my heart for what could’ve been, what was and what would never be. But urgency filled me as well, a single thought rising up stronger than the nostalgia: Jo needed me.
I said a silent goodbye to Garrett and offered up a prayer—to whoever was listening— that his life would be happy and long. And maybe he would choose to remember only the good parts of our brotherhood.
I drove away and didn’t look back. Only forward to Jo.
You could say the business dinner had been a success. Lee and his rowdy buddies were loud with grandiose plans. It was decided his friend Warren Jeffries would use his hookups at the parish office to keep the cops off their backs, and Ron Barlow would run “distribution” through his trucking company. Patty did her best to pretend she was okay with their scheme to bring methadone to the greater Dolores area. I tried to eat a bite here and there, and stay more or less invisible until I could slip upstairs.
Long into the night, I heard Lee pacing around downstairs, holding an intense conversation with himself. I knew he was jonesing for a fix. Practically climbing the walls with need. Then came the unmistakable sounds of him cooking up. Soon the smell of ammonia and rotten eggs drifted upstairs, followed by the angry crash of breaking glass. Telltale signs of a bad batch.
I slept fitfully, afraid he’d burn the house down from under me. At dawn, I crept downstairs. Lee was passed out on the living room couch with an empty bottle of Wild Turkey in his lap.
The kitchen was a fucking disaster, the table littered with beer bottles, chicken bones, and industrial household chemicals. My growling stomach went silent. No point trying to scrounge up breakfast here. The diner was a better bet anyway. I’d let Lee stay unconscious a little longer and hope the booze would drown out the itch for another high.
I arrived at the diner thirty minutes early for my 7 a.m. shift. Patty was already there marrying ketchups, her back to me, though I imagined a few of her Medusa head snakes turning to hiss at me.
“You’re early,” she said when she saw me. “You take care of my boy? Get him breakfast?”
“He wasn’t hungry.” I headed for the back room.
Patty followed me. “Why not? He’s a man. Men need to eat.”
I turned around and stared down her death glare with my own exhausted eyes. “He got high last night after everyone left. Then he drank himself down, passed out on the couch and that’s where I left him.”
Patty straightened and sniffed, crossing her arms over her bony chest. She hated that she was losing her son to drugs. Her worry was both maternal and practical: legally, the diner belonged to Lee. Before meth took over his life, he ran the cash register and shot the shit with the locals. Now, Patty managed the place, single-handedly, working too many double-shifts for a lady pushing seventy. I took as many as I could, to help save up more money for my escape but Patty still got stuck when Lee didn’t show up. She was trapped, the same way I was. Her only coping strategy was to take the frustration out on me.
“You take care of my boy,” she snapped. “That’s your job. It’s only reason you got this job. You gotta keep him happy. Do you hear?”
I heard. And saw. The stone-wall gray of her eyes was crumbling with desperation. As Patty flounced out of the back room, I almost felt sorry for her.
The breakfast rush was on. Half a dozen tables were seated; Patty took one half of the small diner; I took the other.
I started at a table in my section where a lone guy had his face in the menu.
“Morning,” I said. “Ready to order?”
He set the menu down, looked up at me and smiled. “Hi, Jo.”
He smiled a beautiful smile, the one that made me feel as if I were a gift fallen in his lap.
“Hi, Jo,” he said, pulling me close.
“Hi, Evan,” I said. Then we were kissing…
My order pad fell from my hands. The pen bounced off the table, hit the ground and rolled away.
Evan.
Here. Right here. Right now. Looking at me.
I stared at this mirage, my mouth agape, my exhausted brain trying to work out if he were real or a figment of my desperate imagination.
His face was filled out, more chiseled, yet leaner too. His jawline squared and shadowed with beard growth. His blond hair was longer, pulled back in a short ponytail that curled in on itself at the collar of his denim jacket. Broader shoulders in that jacket. Thicker arms on the table in front of him.
His body had changed, but his eyes were the same shade of sky blue. Beautiful, kind eyes. Not laced with suspicion or contempt. Not glassy and empty from drugs. They looked tired. Full. Like he’d seen more than he’d wanted to in the past four years. I recognized that kind of heaviness. I saw it in my own reflection every morning. I saw it reflected now in Evan’s warm, weary gaze.