starters, where’s the girl?”
Except when he’s loaded, I’ve never seen Tim so slow on the uptake. Now he’s blinking again. “Um – you mean . . . ? What girl?”
“You’ve got more than one? Look – you can’t do this – I need to be here, and I’m sorry if you were planning to use this place for your hookups and booty calls or whatever. I don’t care what you told Jase you’d pay, he had no right to go ahead and hand this over to you.”
Tim tosses the toothbrush and toothpaste on the counter, grabs a pack of Marlboros, whips out a lighter, shakes out a cigarette, and lights up, all in about two seconds.
I scowl at him. Smoking in my apartment.
“Sorry – where are my manners? Want one?” he asks around the cigarette trapped between his lips.
The bedroom door opens and out comes . . .
Nan, Tim’s nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof twin sister.
“So, yeah,” she says, twisting a coil of hair around a finger and reaching back to flip off the light, “I’ll reassure Mom I did my duty. Think she wanted me to tuck you in too? I forgot to bring Pierre the Bear, but I can . . .” She stumbles to a halt. “Oh – hi, Alice.”
“Hey, Nan.” I give her a brief, but actually genuine smile, which she returns hesitantly. This girl, she’s like one of Jase’s animals that was badly treated by its previous owner.
“We can skip the tucking in,” Tim tells her. “Sending over sheets and towels, that was – uh, nice. Tell Ma thanks. Not when Pop’s around, though. Pretty sure I’m supposed to be sleeping under some newspaper on a sidewalk grate somewhere.”
Nan bites her pinkie nail, tearing at the cuticle so savagely, mine nearly bleeds in sympathy. Studying me with a vertical line between her eyebrows, identical to Tim’s, she picks up the windbreaker, looks back and forth between us, then doesn’t budge – until Tim sets his hand in the middle of her back, steering her toward the door.
“Good deed done, Two-Shoes. You’d better beat it. I don’t think Alice here wants any witnesses to the homicide.”
When the door closes behind her, he gestures at me, like, bring it on. Then, before I can say a word, “You want me to get lost, right, Alice? Spreading like a virus, that. Schools, jobs, my folks – should I start a running tally? We can put a list on the fridge.”
No flirty flippancy. Hard, sarcastic – like a shove. I haven’t heard him like this since he first stopped drinking. Then he studies me, eyes drifting from my face down to my clenched fists, back to my face again.
He turns away. “Shit, I’m sorry, Alice. I was gonna go to my friend Connell’s, but he relapsed, so that was a no-go. Jase said . . . I didn’t know this place was supposed to be yours. Shoulda guessed. No worries. I’m one hell of a fast packer.” He tosses me the kind of smile one of my little brothers would after skinning his knee. See, I’m fine. It doesn’t hurt at all.
Then he starts skimming the crumpled bills off the counter, shoving them in the wallet, concentrating harder on it than the job requires.
“Where will you go? Back home?”
“Not your problem, Hot Alice.”
I examine his downturned face, but the parts I can see reveal nothing. He finishes with the wallet, tries to shove it in his back pocket, then seems to realize his pajama bottoms have no such thing.
“Wait. Why exactly are you here, Tim?”
Shrugging, he steps around me to pick up an empty cardboard box from the floor, tosses the wallet, then the sweatshirt and socks into it. Automatically assuming I’m kicking him to the curb right this second, late on a windy, rainy night.
Even I am not that cold.
Then I get it, sharp as a slap.
His parents were on that get-lost list. His own mom and dad kicked him out.
When Tim glances at me, he goes suddenly, stunningly red, wraps both arms around his middle. “What?”
“How . . .” I start; I’m not sure how to finish. I can’t even imagine. “Never mind. I’m making you tea and you’re going to tell me what happened,” I say.
“Or what? I might like my other options better. Spanking? Water torture? I can get the shower going in no time.”
Amazingly, there is tea. But of course no kettle. I fill a saucepan with water and cross my fingers that there are mugs. Ah yes, ugly black-and-yellow ones from Fitness Planet. Joel’s such a class act. I turn to the fridge to see if there’s actually milk too, and there, tacked to it, is a list. A long one, in various different colors of messy, boy-handwriting scrawls.
Tim Mason: The Boy Most Likely To . . .
Need a liver transplant
Find the liquor cabinet blindfolded
Drive his car into a house
I scan down the paper.
“Find the sugar,” I say to him. “Then tell me the rest.”
“I doubt there’s sugar,” he says, “but I see resistance is futile. Hey – it’s not a big deal. Turns out . . . I guess . . . my parents, my pop . . . quitting the senator gig? Final straw. Embarrassing, see – Grace Reed is a family friend, yada, yada – he’s done with me. I’m out the door – no need to turn up for Sunday dinner. Small upside, that. And I’ve got four months to turn it all around until I’m out a college fund, and probably stricken from the family Bible. End of story.”
Now I feel sick. “He couldn’t have been serious – I mean . . . he’s your dad.”
Tim looks down at his fingers, raising his eyebrows as though surprised not to find the cigarette still there. “He’s a serious guy, Pop.” His voice deepens. “Time to be a man, Tim. Maybe I should have read the fine print on ditching ol’ Gracie. That it meant” – he indicates the apartment – “this. But, I mean – he didn’t repo my car and yank my allowance or anything.” The smile that follows is tight, not his open, wicked one. “In his defense? He did offer me a scotch for the road.”
I inhale sharply and he reddens again, rubs his hands through his hair so some parts are sticking straight up. I turn to the cabinet again, searching for sugar, but no such luck. “You’re going to have to go without sugar.”
He nods. “Here’s where I tell you you’re sweet enough, right?”
“It’s definitely not. Move, so I can pour this without burning you.” I slosh the boiling liquid into one cup, then the other, nod toward the couch. “Keep talking.”
“While the Ilsa-the-She-Wolf-of-the-SS act is hot as hell, Alice, there’s really nothing more to say. It’s probably temporary anyway. If me not being office boy for Senator Grace is embarrassing for Pop, you can only imagine how he’d feel about me hanging around the steps of the building and loan with a tin cup.” Tim collapses onto the couch anyway,
