“I was here,” I said, crossing my arms. “What of it?”
He pointed at the graffiti. There were large red and blackX’s spray-painted all over the front of the store, including on the windows. “Do you not see that? I’m giving you fifty dollars a week to make sure that doesn’t happen! Damn it, everyone at the shop was right. You’re not going to help us at all.”
I frowned and thought about turning on my heel right then, leaving the whole mess behind. I did not move across the country to deal with shit like this, no matter how much I wanted to shove my thumb in his mouth and make him worship me with his lips.
“I didn’t see anything. What the hell do you want me to do?”
Ezra sucked on his teeth and kept glaring at me, defiant even as I flexed my muscles, popping out my biceps for his benefit. I had seen the other people in the comic shop glancing warily down the street at the Steel Rose, acting intimidated by our crowd, but not Ezra. He was feisty, and that earned him some respect.
“You know,” he said, “the other employees at Northstar think you’re bad news.”
I cleared my throat. “That so?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact, that is so! People are saying all kinds of things about you. Things about how you can’t be trusted and trying to convince me I shouldn’t have given you any of our money in the first place.” He threw his arms in the air, the bottom of his T-shirt rising to give me a glimpse of his happy trail and the pink waistband of his underwear. “And now I come into work and find the place vandalized again, and I have to ask myself, Ezra, are all of your friends right to doubt that guy?”
I shrugged. “Maybe they are.”
He looked startled when I said it, his eyes getting wider behind his glasses. After taking a second to recover, he waved his hands in the air again. “Not helping, Brick! Not helping!”
I thought he would leave then, but instead, he started doing that thing where he skipped in place. It was like his feet were doing a little jig so that the rest of his body could stay still. When I realized he wasn’t going anywhere, I sighed and placed my hand on his shoulder. At my touch, he went still and stared up at me.
“Here’s the deal, kid. You want something from me. I get it. You think I’m going to be your protector or some shit. But that’s just some comic book story you made up in your head. That’s some kid shit. If you actually knew me and understood who I am, you wouldn’t be coming to me to look for help. You’d be keeping your distance and staying down at your end of the block.” I pointed at a scar on the side of my face, then straight at him. “Got it?”
He stepped backward, and my hand slipped off his shoulder. The way he flinched and turned away made me think of Charlie again, but I just gritted my teeth, determined to keep those memories buried.
That’s when Ezra got a glint in his eyes, an impish grin lighting up his face. His feet did that little dance, and he pulled a handful of bills out of his pocket, shoving them my way. “Fifty bucks for next week?”
I blinked, struck by his gumption. “You’re trying to pay me again?”
He shrugged. “You see any other potential bodyguards on this block?”
A chuckled erupted from deep in my gut, the laughs coming out despite myself. I bent forward, resting my hand on my knees and shaking my head. “Kid, you’re really something, you know that?”
He held out the money again, his eyes straining and impatient. “Well, take the damn money then!”
I sighed and snatched it from his hands, thinking about the slow weekend I’d had at the bar and the rent that was coming up. “No fucking guarantees, though.”
He spun on his heel, storming away and talking to himself while he went. “No guarantees from the tough guy! Hold the presses—the scary guy at the bar can’t be relied on!” He turned around, walking backward for a few paces. “You’re just going to prove everyone right, Brick! Is that really what you want to do?” He stumbled, almost falling on his ass, and then spun around again, still muttering to himself as he paced toward the store.
I kicked the brick wall, letting out a burst of emotions I had been holding in. Then I thought about his face, contorted and defiant even as I stared him down, and I couldn’t help but chuckle again.
He might not look like much, but damn if that kid didn’t have guts.
