Page 8 of Rough

“You better.”

“I will, I promise, even if…”

The silence on the other end reminded me that he had much less interest in talking to me than I had in talking to him.

Not seeing him face-to-face was in both of our best interests. I found his stand-offish attitude supportive of his lack of interest in me, which made matters that much easier.

Hopefully his sense of time passing was as non-existent as his sense of humor. I’d wait until I got paid, and then give him a call when I could hand him $1,000 in cash.

With any luck, by then what little interest I had in him would fade away.

FOUR

Pee Bee

I lifted the eggs from the skillet and carefully placed them on the plate beside the toast. It was fine if he broke the yolks of the over-medium eggs I cooked him, but if I did it before I handed him the plate, there’d be hell to pay.

I laid four pieces of bacon beside the eggs, and carried the plate into the living room.

“Well, good god damn,” he said as he sat up in his chair. “I wondered if that was for me, or if you were in there getting fatter by the minute.”

My mother had bought a special recliner with a tray that swiveled from the arm of the chair toward the center, allowing him to eat while he read or watched T.V.

I spun the tray over his lap and set the plate down. “I’m not fat.”

He glanced at the eggs and then looked up, grinning. “Pretty fuckin’ close.”

“Get your own silverware.”

He scooped up one of the eggs with his fingers, dropped it onto a piece of toast, and picked it up. “I don’t need any fuckin’ silverware, fat ass.”

“Whatever. Hope those yolks bust all to fuck.”

He took a bite of his open-faced eggs sandwich. “I don’t give a fuck if they do. Long as you didn’t break ‘em cooking ‘em.”

I let out an exaggerated sigh and turned away. “I gotta piss.”

“Lift the fucking seat,” he said over a mouthful of food. “I’ve gotta sit to piss, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna wallow in your piss when I do.”

I walked into the bathroom, shut the door, and stepped onto the scale.

231.

At 6’-8”, I was far from fat.

I pissed, washed my hands, and walked into the living room. He was wiping his plate clean with a small piece of toast.

“What’d you weigh?” he asked as he poked the toast in his mouth.

I sat down on the couch. “I went to piss.”

“I raised you, you anal retentive asshole,” he said. “What’d you weigh?”

“Two and a quarter.”

“Two-forty?”

“Two and a quarter,” I said again, knowing if it was much more, he’d bitch. He didn’t understand Body Mass Index or body fat percentages.