“The coffee shop’s a mess, Mom. That’s where I was when the van came through the wall. It’s going to cost a bit to get it fixed.” The insurance would handle the repairs, but he didn’t want her to know that. “But I’m doing okay.”
Even if the insurance didn’t cover the new damage, Frank’s death left Forest decently off, and that made his mother dangerous. For all his hippie radical leanings, Frank’s family liked making money, and he’d banked most of everything that came his way over the years, letting it build up under investments and properties. Giving his mother that kind of information would be like releasing a shark in a kiddie pool filled with bleeding minnows. Nothing would survive her rapacious appetite, including the pool keeping them alive.
“Tell you what, when you get out of there, drop me a line and we can go party.” She sounded cheerful, as if recalling a better time. “’Member when we worked down off the Tenderloin that one time? God, that was a good week. We were like an all-you-can-eat buffet—something for everyone. One stop and we had everything you could want, remember that?”
They’d done a lot of things together during the times he’d run from Franklin—most of which he didn’t remember. The Tenderloin crawl she began to rhapsodize on was a memory he couldn’t shake if he wanted to. Whatever he’d been on during those few days seemed to have taken a chisel to his brain and then cold-flashed the whole time with thick cement, immortalizing every single moment he’d spent in his mother’s company.
It’d been the last time he’d run from Frank. The very last time he’d had to crawl back to the man he knew was going to toss him away and beg for another chance.
If only Frank’d let him beg, but all the man did was pick Forest up and clean him up before rolling him into a clean bed—alone. They’d never spoken about anything without Forest bringing it up first, but after he’d spent two days throwing his stomach up against the bathroom walls, Frank finally spoke out.
“She’s going to kill you, kiddo, like one of those animals who eat their own young,” the man said, holding Forest’s hair back from his face as he did his best to toss out the water he’d just gotten down. “Maybe not this time but maybe the next. I’m always going to be here for you, kid, but I don’t want the next time I hold you, it’s to lie you down into a box. That’ll kill me, dude, and you’ve got so much fucking talent in those hands of yours, it’ll be a shame to waste it on a whore—even if it’s the whore who gave birth to you.”
He’d been right. Frank’d always been right.
“So, you up for it?” His mother broke through his memory of Frank’s sad eyes and mournful voice. “It’s been a while since we’ve done that. It’ll be good.”
“Nah, I think I’ll pass,” Forest choked around the lump in his throat.
“Your loss. Unless you’ve gotten uglier since the last time I saw you, you could still pull some in.” Another scrape of her lighter and she’d moved on to her next cigarette. “Not like when you were younger. Shittiest thing that happened to you was getting so tall. It fucking killed you.”
“I’ve had shittier.” He wanted her off the phone. He’d taken in as much as he could handle, and calling his mother turned out to be a trip down a rusty-tack-strewn memory lane. It was never going to change—she was never going to change. It all came down to how much she could get out of people and how much of his ass she could sell—because selling her own tail wasn’t enough. “They’re coming to do more tests on me in a bit. You going to be around later?”
“I dunno. I might change this phone. This one’s crackly.” It sounded fine to him, but reception and hearing was on her list of complaints before she ditched a phone she more than likely stole. “Hey, you got something you can spare? To tide me over. I’ve got a party I’m going to this weekend. Guy’s paying me some bucks to be there. If you can front me, I’ll shoot it back to you.”
Another small part of him died. Not because his mother hit him up for money. He’d expected that. What hurt was that she saw him as another mark to lie to, as if he hadn’t grown up suckling on her lies for sustenance. Hell, her breast milk had been a lethal mix of coke and delusions, and he’d been weaned off that into working the system. To have her pull one on him—a tired old lie at that—angered Forest as much as it saddened him.
He wouldn’t give her anything—he couldn’t—not unless Forest was willing to contribute to her cooking herself to death.
“I don’t have any extra.” It wasn’t quite a lie, mainly because he didn’t know where his wallet was, but she’d suck him dry if he let her. “I would if I could, you know?”