Burn Scars, Eddie Generous [read full novel txt] 📗

dust. A grey cloud left his mouth and he imagined the future again, maybe even quitting smoking after he climbed all the other hurdles.

“One thing at a time,” he said to the cluttered room. “Get one thing right before you worry about the second.”

Rusty had stopped on his way home from Craig’s house to buy a carton of cigarettes, knowing he’d be smoking double time for the next six days. He’d fixed a cup of instant coffee and drank and smoked, then fixed another cup to go with two more cigarettes, it was all he could manage since returning.

Eleven o’clock came and went. The basic cable that came with the room was on channel 22 and a re-run of Rescue 9-1-1. A girl had her tongue stuck in a Yoo-hoo bottle and it just kept swelling bigger and bigger and going into darker shades of purple. The visuals were wildly nasty, especially that it was all re-enactment—somebody had to build that tongue, somebody probably earned a month’s wage just building that ugly tongue. Rusty hardly noticed anything about the show beyond the tongue. It was incredible, the jobs some people had and how well they did them.

Once the credits rolled, his mind got busy elsewhere, settling on the shifting versions of the future before him. After that second coffee, he had traded up and poured a cup of whiskey with ice. He sipped, his back against the brown chair and his feet resting next to his mounded and warm ashtray. He had to fight himself to put time between smokes.

The more he thought, the more melancholy he became. The future wasn’t really that bright, not in comparison to the trouble he faced. The mess that was his life made him want to get stinking drunk, and for a few heartbeats, he felt like maybe not everything was his father’s fault when he tried to do away with problems via match.

Just as the stupid reality of that thought settled, knuckles rapped against the window above his bedding. He stood on his pillow and pulled open the condensation-sopping window.

“Hey,” Christine said.

“Hey,” Rusty said and slid closed the window. He left his room, hooked a right to the short flight of steps, and opened the main door to let Christine inside. She slipped in around him, knowing better than to speak until they were back in his room. The landlords were jerks and Rusty was paranoid about being evicted—even if it had become a baseless worry. When he’d first moved in, he heard them arguing about how long he’d be there and how stupid it was to take a chance on a kid renter. That lingered, even despite that he was no longer a kid and could probably afford a spot in one of the slum apartments—after he finished school, of course.

The she-landlord upstairs was downright vicious through the ceiling, though sweet as pie whenever they were face-to-face. Usually because she needed him to run to the Esso gas station on the corner to grab her a pack of cigarettes, which she smoked whenever she wasn’t wearing her oxygen mask, even sometimes when it dangled around her neck like pearls. Her skin was ash grey and her hair was long and white, and she wore it a foot high, straight up in a beehive. The he-landlord was quiet, but not exactly approachable.

Christine pushed through his door and turned. Under the foggy lights of his room, the dried tear streaks became apparent on her cheeks. Rusty wrapped his arms around her where they stood. “What happened?” he said.

“My dad. I don’t know. He was drunk and being an asshole…about you.”

“Yeah. Even if he didn’t catch us fooling around I think he’d still hate me.”

“He tried to forbid me from seeing you.”

“Really? Forbid?” Rusty pushed back and Christine started nodding, then bent to unzip her boots. “He give you a reason?”

“He said you were probably like your father.”

Rusty flinched some. Everybody wanted to talk about his father all of a sudden. “What?”

“He’s said it before.” Christine spotted the whiskey glass and drained it, then shivered and barked out a hot after breath. “I just never said because it’s stupid.”

Rusty dropped down onto his chair and reached for the smoldering cigarette in the ashtray. “You’re the third person to bring up my dad today.”

Christine wrinkled her face and unzipped her jacket. “It was my dad, not me.” She snatched his cigarette for a drag and immediately gave it back. She rubbed her palms against her pant legs and took a deep breath. She got frantic sometimes when she was upset—usually on account of her father.

“Yeah, but, man, it’s like the universe is conspiring against me. It’s been a hell of a…day.” Rusty stopped himself. The group had to be quiet for things to work, and a slip up might really make Rusty become like his dad, maybe they’d become cellblock neighbors. “Hell of a day.” If he said any more, the floodgates would burst.

“Yeah.” Christine wiped a tear away and then pulled her shirt over her head. She wasn’t wearing a bra. The shirt landed on his portable CD player. She then got to unbuttoning her jeans.

Rusty took the final drag from the cigarette. “You spending the night?”

Christine shrugged and shook her head simultaneously. “I don’t know. I don’t—just, let’s do it, okay?”

“Sure,” Rusty said and bent over to stub out the cigarette. He pulled off his shirt and opened his pants. Anything would be a welcome distraction from ripping off Dwayne and what the aftereffects might mean for his future. For his freedom.

Christine gave a gentle wiggle to get her jeans down over her hips. Her panties were pink, cheap, cotton, the kind of stuff they sold in bins, three for $10. She dropped down onto his makeshift bed. Rusty followed her there and leaned flat as he tugged off