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

the time he got there—his limbs felt hollow and sapped, his head light, his sneakers heavy as cinderblocks. So he’d ordered a plate of eggs, sausage, hash browns, and two more slices of toast, despite that he felt guilty about it, despite that if nothing worked out with the heist, simply treating himself that little bit would throw him in arrears in a necessity someplace else.

“Man, how’s it going?” Rusty said after swallowing. “You back in town?”

“Great, and yeah,” Mike Campbell said and sat down at the communal table, though sideways with his knees poking out as if to solidify that he wasn’t staying long. “You still living in that little room?”

Mike and Rusty were the same age and good friends when Rusty was in the eleventh grade—Mike was in thirteenth, grabbing extra credits to bump up his scores for a college application. One time Mike got too drunk at a school dance and Rusty piggybacked him all the way to the boarding house so he could sleep it off on the foldout chair without his parents finding out.

“Yeah.”

“Crazy, well, I got to run, but I bought the Pink Rose and I’m redoing the apartments upstairs. Come by if you ever want to see them. Won’t be done for another three weeks or so, would be cool to know some of my tenants.”

“How big?”

“There’s a one-bedroom and a bachelor.”

“Hmm, maybe. How much?”

“Have them listed at five-fifty and seven hundred.”

Rusty paid seventy-five per week and that was about his limit, but said, “Sure man, I’ll stop by for a look in a couple weeks or something. How’d you come to buy that place?”

“My dad died and it went up for sale with the business. My aunt had the listing and knows the manager of the restaurant real good, so it kind of fell into my lap. I failed out at college and started working for a realtor and took courses myself, got into property management, then ass cancer got Dad and he had a bit of an estate. So now I own a few places.”

“Wild. Sorry about your dad.”

“Yeah.” Mike got up as the restaurant’s door opened and Danny and Craig pushed into the Fall Street Café. “See you around.”

“Man, yeah. Cool. Good luck with the renovations.”

Mike lifted his coffee cup in a salute and then was gone. Rusty shifted his focus while he absently reached for his coffee mug.

“Mr. Studious,” Danny said without the usual humor as he walked by. “You being a good boy?” The tone suggested that this was a real question, asking something more to the likes of am I going to have to put you in line?

“Always,” Rusty said and sipped from his cup and wondered if these guys somehow knew.

They ordered and had their drinks in seconds. Paid no more ceremony to the place or Rusty and started off.

“Have fun today,” Rusty called out.

“You too,” Craig said. He looked about as sickly as Rusty felt.

Rusty turned in his seat and tried to focus on the day, rather than what might happen in the countless tomorrows to come. He finished his breakfast and a fourth cup of coffee without another word to any of the regulars. When he finally remembered the clock and stood, he found he had to piss and might arrive late for class, despite driving. He tried to care as he stood over the urinal, but gave his parts an extra shake as if to spite himself and the silly schedule he really ought to keep.

He yawned behind the wheel, ready for a nap with all that food in him. He got to rolling and glanced at the clock on the face of his CD deck. “Close,” he said, slightly above the Juvenile track that spun on low. The guardian angel of stoplights was on his side, as was the guardian angel of school parking lot spaces, and he dropped into his seat at the front of the math class just as the bell rang.

The teacher said, “Nick of time.” He knocked on the front, right hand table and then pointed at Rusty. “I have a catch-up booklet for you.” He leaned in. “Only a study guide, if you need it, it’ll help you come test times and for the exam, but I don’t need to see anything. All the marks here are tests, you’re passing and I’m guessing that’s what matters and not a future in collegiate mathematics?” Rusty nodded and the teacher knocked on his table again. “Thought so, don’t envy your situation, but I admire the effort. Keep up the good work.” He straightened up then and walked to his desk at the front off to the side of the busy chalkboard. “All right, everyone, let’s continue where we left off.”

The students, all but Rusty, began opening binders, bags, and textbooks. The hum was fine and steady, regular, normal, mundane, and Rusty’s mind wandered to future failures and how he’d be lucky to stay in his dumpy room—forget a nice, renovated place above a swanky restaurant.

After the teacher got the class going on finding their morning’s work, he dropped off a booklet of photocopied pages onto Rusty’s table. The teacher looked as if he was about to say something else to Rusty, but a triple rap landed against the door and interrupted anything that might’ve been.

Rusty inhaled through tight lips, clenching from his teeth to his asshole, knowing there was a cop on the other side, looking to book him on something he hadn’t even done yet. They’d found Jim’s corpse and his nosy landlady caught the name on the shortwave—sometimes he heard the broadcast from his room when he was home during the day. She’d call it in and tell them exactly what Rusty said and then some, add embellishments for the gossip mill—she was the foreman of that operation, as far as