“Yeah,” said Sullivan. “Yeah.”
“Unless you go blind,” Balliol murmured, and then said, “Up! Here comes the bus.”
“Bye,” said Chris again.
“Later,” Balliol said as the large bus sighed to a halt.
“Bye,” said Sullivan, and climbed on the bus behind Balliol.
Balliol was putting his fare in the machine, and the bus was lurching off down Page Street so violently that Sullivan crashed down in the seat beside his best friend.
“Chris Powers knows my name.”
“And you know his.”
“But he’s the quarterback.”
“And you’re Sullivan Reardon. Chill out, Sully, all right?” Balliol folded his knees to his chest and took out a book while the bus rumbled toward the mall.
“I LOVE THIS MAN!” Savannah Darrow announced as she marched into the long ranch house on Owen Street.
“And I love my sister,” Sidney said. “Who brought the Chinese, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Savannah reported as she marched through the living room and into the kitchen, putting the bags down where her brother could see them while he stuck his nose in the first one she set on the table.
“Sweet and sour,” Sidney murmured into the bag and pulled his nose out, his glasses steamed.
“But I was not talking about how much I love you,” Savannah told him, pushing her glasses up. “I was talking abut much I love this new man who is the bomb in bed and—Hey, Mason, Hey Addison!”
Sidney cleared his throat.
“Are you staying for dinner?” Savannah asked Addison.
“Nope, gotta get to the ole gas station. Shift starts at 6:30.”
“I don’t know how I feel about you working nights,” Sidney said. “Especially on Drake Street.”
“We’ve already been through this, Sidney. I need the money. Or at least I want the money and... stuff. And as gas stations on shady streets go, your family runs a pretty tight one.”
Sidney shrugged.
The Darrows didn’t have jet planes and a chain of hotels, but they had made a modest fortune from a combination of frugal living and the ownership of a chain of gas stations and grocery stores in the greater northeast Ohio area. They also owned a fashion boutique that began as a boosting business with one of Sidney’s aunts stealing clothes from high price shops and the backs of trucks to resell them on the black market.
But that wasn’t talked about much.
“Well, Tommy’s staying, right?” Sidney said.
Tommy nodded silently, then remembered himself and said, “Yes, sir. “Mom doesn’t cook.”
“See, now I think a woman should be able to cook a meal,” Savannah said.
“You don’t cook,” Mason told her.
“I’m not married with children.”
“Here, Addison,” Mason was spooning out half of his egg fu young onto a plate and he gave Addison the rest of the carton with a white sack of rangoons. “Take these at least.”
Addison grinned at his friend and said, “Mason’s my shepherd, I shall not want.”
“I’ll walk you to the door,” Mason told him and when he came back Savannah said, “Well. Let’s eat. And then I’ll tell you all about Bobby.”
“Can you tell us the PG 13 version of Bobby?” Sidney said.
“I’ll try,” said Savannah. “But, really, we have more fun than the law allows.” She cocked her head, thought about it and said, “Actually, we do have more fun than the law allows.”
“I think we should say grace,” Tommy said.
“I think we’ll need grace,” Sidney said, turning to his sister.
She just shook her head, smiled smugly and moaned.
“Dear Lord and Savior,” Tommy began without prompting, “we want to thank you for this wonderful feast which you have provided for us from the earth, the fruit of your bounteous earth. Lord Jesus, we know we can’t do anything without you or your grace and so we thank you for this food and our mutual fellowship. In your holy and ineffable name—”
Savannah opened her eyes, turned to her brother and whispered, “Ineffable?”
Sidney bit his lip to stop from laughing and closed his eyes again.
“Amen,” said Tommy.
“Amen,” they all repeated.
And to all the Darrow’s credit: no one cracked a smile.
Sullivan Reardon actually waited until, from his second story window, he could see Balliol reach the end of his walk on Jury Street. The sun was getting low, and he had elected to walk the eight or so blocks to his home in the lower end of Eastforth. Eastforth was one of the better neighborhoods in Cartimandua, but it was a large one, divided into sections of good, better and best. Sully; lived in Good where there were wood and brick colonials with little lampposts at the heads of their walkways and large oak trees in the front yard. But Balliol lived on Metcalf Drive with the great stone houses and sprawling brick Tudors on hills, spaced apart, hidden by trees. That was the problem with Balliol, Sullivan thought as he closed his curtain and slipped in a CD. His life was so hidden by trees, high and lofty. He was rich enough not to need anybody. He was so snappish and spitfire, and so low on sympathy and...
“That gets old,” Sully muttered.
And Balliol thought he knew everything. If Sully had stuck in this Beck CD, then Balliol would say, “Oh, you’re listening to him. Sometimes Sullivan wondered: “Is he really human.”
He got two books out, his small journal with his poems and his writings, the ones that Balliol thought were stupid, would think were stupid if he ever showed them to his friend, and he took out his yearbook, to do what Balliol would make fun of him for.
Sullivan Reardon’s pride was his handwriting. It was the only thing his teachers had ever praised him for. He read back what he had written a few days ago:
I know he’s my best friend. I’ve known him all my life. But the more things progress the more there is a distance between us. One day I think we won’t even be friends anymore. But if not with him, with who? (Whom?) There is no one else.
Was that why they were still friends? Because they didn’t have anyone else to be friends with? He’d had other friends before. Hadn’t he?
Sullivan Reardon hit repeat on his CD player.
He wondered, as he looked over the photograph of Chris Powers, what his life was like. In the picture it was a game night and he had on the school’s white and red, the white stretch pants, the red jersey with his number: 37. His face was determined and hard, not like today when they had met for the first time and Sully felt as if he’d been cut. How could Chris know him? Would he ever speak to him again?
He flipped to the index of the yearbook and looked up the four pages with Chris Powers. On one he was in his school uniform, at a desk, looking studious while the caption read:
Powers concentrates on his studies after school during the winter. A three-sport letter winner in climate seasons, Chris treasures the dark winter with its lack of athletics, as he continues to excel in academic honors. Powers is a winner of the Phi Kappa Psi Award and a member of the Collegae Honorum Society for Gifted Students.
God, he must have a charmed life! Balliol would stick his fingers down his throat and make a gagging motion if he read this, but Sullivan just felt really unworthy. All he had was his writing which no one would read, and his poetry which no one cared about but him. He had his mom. His dad sent child support, and he had the growing feeling that no one else was like him, that he was weird and strange, that people talked about him in the hallways.
“Good night, Chris,” Sully murmured, and closing the yearbook, he turned over on his bed and began scribbling in his notebook while the music continued.
Addison gnawed on the cold rangoon and when the bell jingled, looked up to see Becky enter the gas station.
“You almost ready, Addison?”
Addison looked over the cigarettes and said, biting into the rangoon, “Shift ends at ten.”
He pushed the bag forward, across the counter.
Becky shook her head. “No thanks.”
He grinned at her.
“Thanks for coming and picking me up,” he told her. “You know, in a few weeks I’ll have my own car, and then you won’t have to do this.”
“I don’t mind, Add,” she told him. “In fact I like it. Getting to see you is sort of like the one bright spot in my day.”
“I don’t know how I feel about that,” he said smiling sadly at her.
“I think Becky should have lots of bright spots in her day.”
“You want some real food when we leave?”
“Sure. Where should we go? Hold up.”
No, Addison told himself, he should not be afraid of Black people. No, you should not judge people by the way they look. Yes, he wears baggy clothes too. No, you should not be frightened just because this is Drake Street and anyone who walks out of the dark into this gas station is scary.
“No,” he said, and his hand went under the counter.
“Can I do something for you all?” he said, lightly. But his voice sounded weak, like a bitch’s.
One of the boys looked at him earnestly. He looked at Becky. Then he looked at one of his friends. They looked at each other and, just like that, the boy took out a gun aimed it at Addison and said:
“Yeah, you can give me all your FUCKING money.”