about it. Michael liked to lecture Andy on abstinence and chastity, but Gabe had made sure to hammer into their brother’s sad, broken brain the necessity of using a rubber, no matter if the girl told him she was on the pill or what. Gabe didn’t like how the girls treated Andy, as if he were stupid. They took advantage of his generosity, that’s what Gabe thought, and though he’d tried to explain to his brother that he didn’t always need to pick up the check, especially for girls who could easily afford their own popcorn, Andy didn’t listen.
As if on cue, the phone rang. Gabe checked the number—it was Michael. He’d have let it go to the answering machine, but the old man picked it up. The low murmur of conversation began from the living room.
Gabe cracked the top off a beer and sipped at it, savoring the cool sting. A cigarette would go best with the drink, but he didn’t smoke in the house, not with the old man’s oxygen tank ready to blow them all up with the flick of a spark. Besides, Gabe liked to smoke. He just didn’t like to eat and drink smoke, or sleep with it on his pillow or wake up with it. So for now, he drank slowly at the kitchen table and read from a battered paperback copy of The Books of Blood. He’d lost track of how many times he’d read it, but he’d had it since he was a teenager, back before the days of the internet where you could find anything you wanted with a well-typed search. Back then he’d had to special-order it from the bookstore at the mall in Dubois and wait weeks for it to arrive.
Janelle Decker had turned him on to Clive Barker’s books. Gabe had seen that Hellraiser movie, but she was the one who told him it had been based on a novella, and that there were other stories, too. She’d brought a box of paperbacks with her from home when she moved into her grandma’s house. Lots of horror, lots of historical romance, a few classics. He wondered if she still read the same kinds of books.
He wondered if she still loved to dance.
The light in the hall came on, and moments later the old man shuffled out in his bare feet, his hair corkscrewed into spikes. Without a word he dragged his oxygen tank toward the fridge and dug around inside, found a coconut cream pie Andy had brought home from work and plopped it on the table. He brought out two plates and two forks. He took his seat with a heavy sigh and sat there for a moment with his head hanging before he looked up, his expression strangely defiant.
“It’s hell getting old, you know that?”
Gabe wasn’t yet forty, but his joints creaked and his hair was starting to silver. When he looked in the mirror he had to suck in his gut a little more than he used to. He could only imagine what it was like for his father, who’d been an old man already by the time he was Gabe’s age, and had done nothing but become ancient since.
“So die,” Gabe said. “Save yourself any more trouble, and us, too.”
The old man snorted and dug his fork into the pie. He licked the tines and pointed it toward Gabe. “Maybe you should fill your mouth with pie. You won’t feel the need to talk so nasty.”
“I don’t like coconut cream.”
The old man grinned. “I know.”
“So who’s the second plate for, then?”
“For your brother, dummy.” The old man pointed the fork at him again. “He’ll be home soon, won’t he? Andy likes coconut cream. He’ll sit here and eat a piece with me. Keep me comp’ny.”
“What do you need company for?”
The old man paused with the fork halfway to his mouth. “Why not?”
When Gabe was younger, his father had spent time with his buddies in a bar or at hunting camp. Sometimes he went to play poker at Al Hedge’s house, though Al had died about ten years ago and nobody had taken up the game after him. And sometimes, when Gabe was much, much younger, his dad had left them overnight and gone to who-knew-where, but it must’ve been someplace nice because he always spruced himself up a lot before he went. Other than that, his dad had never been what Gabe might’ve considered the sociable sort, and time hadn’t improved that.
Gabe shrugged. “I just figured you liked sitting in front of the TV by yourself all day long. Why else would you do it?”
The old man said nothing for a few minutes while he decimated his pie. When he’d finished a hefty slice, he dropped the fork onto the plate with a clatter and pushed back from the table. “What do you know about me, anyway?”
The truth was, Gabe knew more about his father than he ever wanted to. More than he ever should have. “I know you spend all your time on your ass in that recliner, cultivating your piles. If you want company, why don’t you go out somewhere?”
“Where would I go?”
“Wherever you want. Go visit some of your buddies, go to the VFW. Hell, go to church.”
The old man hadn’t been to church in so long Gabe couldn’t remember the last time. Maybe when Michael had been consecrated. Of course, that was the last time Gabe had been in a church himself.
“Church.” The old man snorted, then coughed. The cough turned into a choke, which became a wheeze.
Gabe watched impassively, wondering if he’d need to jump across the table in a minute to resuscitate him. Wondering, if push came to shove, if he’d bother. The old man’s choking tapered off, and he gave Gabe a glare.
“Wipe that smile off your face.”
“Didn’t know I was smiling,” Gabe said. “Sorry.”
His father wiped his mouth with a paper napkin from the basket in the middle of the table. His hands were shaking. When he looked at Gabe, his eyes were red-rimmed and watering.
“You think I hate you, but I don’t.”
Gabe got up to pour his unfinished beer into the sink. “I’m going out for a smoke.”
“But you hate me.”
Without looking at him, Gabe pushed open the back door and stepped onto the porch. A light swung into the alley from a vehicle in the Deckers’ driveway. A few minutes later he heard the crunch of boots on the ice and salt. Janelle, arms full of brown paper grocery bags, made her careful and slightly unsteady way down the alley toward the back door. Her movements lit the motion-activated spotlight at the back of the house.
He watched her struggle for a minute before she looked up to see him standing there. “Hey.”
“Hi,” Janelle said quietly. She shifted both bags to one arm so she could open the door with the other. “You’re going to freeze.”
“Hot-blooded,” Gabe said without thinking, forgetting for a minute she was the one who’d first called him that.
She laughed, and it was just how he remembered it. Full-on, no holding back. She shook her head a little and pulled open the screen door, one foot on the bottom step. She looked back at him from just inside the back porch.
“Good night.”
She didn’t wait for him to answer. And Gabe, hot-blooded though he might be, was suddenly aware of the cold. He went back inside the kitchen, expecting to find his father gone to bed, or if not that, back in his usual spot in front of the TV.
The old man hadn’t
