Simon.I’m not the only one with a dozen names.
“Then I quit.”Jag flings his plastic badge across the counter and keeps walking, hauling me with him.
This job is better than all the awful things he’s done for money over the years.He can’t quit.
Outside, the Las Vegas heat shocks my system, but Jag doesn’t slow.We’re half a block from the store before I manage to yank my hand out of his.
“You can’t lose your job.”My voice shakes with all the things I can’t tell him.“Please, Jag.”
He whirls on me.“This is more important than a fucking job.”
My throat closes.Sometimes he forgets how big he is.How scary he looks when he’s mad.But I know he’s not mad at me.He’s madforme.Which is worse.
His hand swallows up mine and pulls.We walk fast, him dragging, me stumbling, past tourists and pawn shops and the guy who sits on crates and yells at the sky.We cut down the side alley that smells like rotten fruit.Then another that smells like death.And another.And another.Until we end up behind the abandoned apartment building where he lives.
We climb crumbling stairs.On the top floor, he pulls out the padlock key from around his neck and shoves it into the lock he drilled into the door.
Inside, the air is hot and stale, but familiar.
His setup crowds one half of the room.Towers of humming computers and mismatched monitors.Wires everywhere.Boxes stacked on boxes.He stole most of it.Probably from the store that he just quit.
Power cords snake from the lamp and computer equipment into a hole in the wall and out to wherever he siphons electricity.He steals the Wi-Fi from the smoke shop on the corner.If it goes down, he curses loud enough for the pigeons on the roof to fly away.
On the other side of the room is his bed.
It’s not a real bed.The thin, tattered cushions came from broken lawn chairs he found in a dumpster.He taped the pads together and threw old blankets on top, forming a narrow spot barely wide enough for him.His legs hang off the edge, but he never complains.
The floor is busted tile and rough cement, and the walls are cracked and leaky.
It’s ugly.It’s perfect.I’m happier here than anywhere else.
He shuts the door and slides the interior bolt.Then he turns to me, eyes on fire.“Tell me what happened.”
“I told you.It’s nothing.”
“Nothing doesn’t leave a bruise that big.”
“I got into a fight.”I stare at my beat-up sneakers.I found them in a lost-and-found bin at school, and they don’t fit right.
“Who?”
“I said it’s nothing.”
“You’re not leaving until you tell me who hurt you.”
That makes my heart sink because I know what he’ll do.
The girl who blackened my eye?She didn’t mean to do it.It was stupid.An argument.A thrown brush.I was in the way.The foster mom didn’t care enough to separate us.
He inspects my face, not the bruise, but the way I press my lips together.We hit that wall where I won’t say anything else, and he knows it.
Exhaling through his nose, he jerks his chin toward the attached bathroom.
He follows me into the small, doorless room.The sink doesn’t work.The tub is rust-red at the bottom.Buckets of water line the wall, filled from a hose somewhere outside.The toilet only works when he pours water into the tank.His clothes hang on a rope he strung across the window, and they sway as he walks past them, brushing his shoulder.
“Sit.”He flicks a finger at the closed toilet lid.
I obey as he grabs a cloth from a crate, dips it into the cleanest bucket, and crouches before me.He’s too big to squat like that without his knees practically touching his chin.
