Lenny made no move to touch it. “Say what?”
“I bought a new one. This is yours now.”
Lenny traced one bird-like finger over the surface. “Why are you doing this for me?”
Colin did not understand the question. Or how Lenny had spoken. No inflection. No joy. The youth sounded almost sad. “I just told you.” When the youth remained still, Colin said, “You want me to show you how it works?”
“I know all that. What you think I do downstairs with those machines, play?” Lenny stood up, his gaze as downcast as his voice. “I want to go back now.”
That evening after dinner, Colin was making another futile search of the online sites for some indication that his investments might finally begin to shift when Lenny appeared in his open doorway. Normally Colin hated having the doorajar, knowing everyone who passed could visually invade his space. But Lenny was little more than a human shadow, and the heat only added to the room’s claustrophobic confines. Lenny did not knock. He did not speak. He simply stood in the doorway and waited. Colin had no idea how long the youth had been standing there before he noticed.
When Colin looked over, Lenny said, “I got something I can’t figure out.”
Colin followed him up the second flight and down to the corner room. It was the first time he had entered Lenny’s private space. What he saw halted him in midstride. “Whoa.”
“Don’t you act like that.” Lenny picked up the laptop and did a boneless slide onto the carpet. “Those are my buddies.”
“I’ve never seen so much medicine.”
“Yeah, well, welcome to my world.”
The top of Lenny’s small chest of drawers was literally covered by prescription bottles. Twenty, thirty of them, all lined up in disciplined rows. “What does it all do?”
Lenny was already working the keys. “I like to think of them as my little soldiers. They fight the good fight. They keep the bad stuff out of my life.”
But when Colin joined him on the floor, Lenny’s fingers stilled. He sat there, hunched over, staring at the screen. “What you did today, I never had … People in my world aren’t nice.”
Colin had no idea what to say.
“I never had somebody just give me something. And doing it like you did, no warning …”
“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Colin said.
“Man, you shocked me right out of my skin, plopping that thing down in front of me.”
“I probably should have said something.”
“Naw, it was me. I should’ve handled it better. Said thanks.Something.” He traced one undersized finger along the side of the screen. “I’ve wanted one of these for as long as I can remember.”
And just like that, they were pals again.
They worked together for an hour or so, but then Colin saw the kid was flagging and stood. As he started to leave he asked, “What do you want to do with this?”
Lenny stopped in the process of shutting down his system. “What do you mean?”
“When you grow up. Like, do you want to teach or—”
Lenny rose to his feet, his motions tight. “Man, do you even see the bottles over there?”
Colin found himself again trapped by all he did not understand. “Sure I do.”
“Those words you just spoke, they don’t belong. Not to me.” Lenny shuffled over and set the laptop on the dead center of his desk. It was the only bare spot. The surface was piled with an army of books. “You’re talking about afuture.All I want, all I’m allowed to eventhinkabout, is having just one moretoday.”
He stood there in the doorway until he was certain the youth would not speak again or even look his way. Colin then returned downstairs, wishing there was some way he could take back the words.
CHAPTER24
The first week in July, everything broke open. When Colin looked back, it felt as though he’d watched an online thunderstorm take shape before his eyes. The lightning, the noise, the blast of rain and wind, all that was in his head. But real just the same.
