First Thrills - Lee Child [5]
A couple nights later, Momma came in my room. She was wearing her shimmery snake shirt, and makeup, which was weird since it was her day off work.
She said, “Tommy, listen. I have someone coming over for dinner, and I’d really like it if you could behave.”
“Is she a waitress, too?”
“It’s a he, actually.”
“I don’t want him to touch my comics.”
“He won’t touch your comics.”
“Can we have pizza?”
“Sure. We can have pizza.” She stopped in the doorway and her eyes looked a bit tired, even with the makeup. She said, “This is important to me, Tommy,” and I wasn’t sure what that meant so I didn’t say anything.
I read Batman again, but still couldn’t get past page eleven where the Joker comes in smiling that smile. So then I read one of my Wolverines and that calmed me down so much I didn’t even notice Momma was at my door until she said, in a stiff voice, “Tommy, I’d like you to come meet someone.”
So I got up and followed her down the hall. Who do you think was there but the guy in the overalls who’d given me the pen! Except he wasn’t in overalls now. He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and a leather jacket and he smelled like cologne.
Momma said, “Tommy, I’d like you to meet Bo.”
I remembered about the pen and about how Momma wasn’t supposed to know, so I said, “Nice to meet you, Bo.”
And he shook my hand and said, “Good to meet you, Tommy.”
He came in and was all nice to me, slapping my knee and asking if I like football (no) or baseball (no) and saying he betted the girls were just crazy about me at school (no). Momma watched and smiled except when I said, “no,” then she stood behind him and gave me that angry scowl, which was weird because Momma always taught me not to lie. But she also taught me not to talk to strangers and now here she was wanting me to lie to a stranger. It was very confusing.
The doorbell finally rang and Momma said, “Oh, that must be the pizza,” and got up.
Bo said, “No, please, let me,” and he pulled a cool wallet out of the inside pocket of his jacket. The wallet was leather with pretty Indian-looking stitching on the back that showed a sunset, the sun all yellow and wobbly going down into the ocean. Bo took out a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to Momma and she bit her lip and smiled at him then went in the other room.
I said, “I can eat eight slices.”
Bo said, “I bet you can, chief,” and then Momma came back in with the pizza.
Momma put the pizza on the kitchen table and said, “Thank you.” Then she looked at me and said, “Say ‘thank you.’ ”
I said, “Say thank you.”
Momma hates when I do that but I pretend I don’t know any better. She smiled at him and said, “He doesn’t know any better.”
He said, “I completely understand.”
We ate. I ate a lot. Momma excused herself to the bathroom. Bo got up and looked around a little, peering through the door to the garage and into the closet door and the little den, checking out the rooms like he was gonna buy the place. When the toilet flushed, he sat back down in a hurry.
Momma came back in. She said, “I just need to clean up and read Tommy his story before bed. Unless . . .”
And Bo said, “What?”
Momma said, “Unless you want to read him his story. Then we could be done quicker and, you know, alone.”
Bo smiled extra-wide and said, “I’d love to.”
I went back and got in my jammies and he watched me while I changed, and smiled but it wasn’t a nice smile. It was like the Joker’s smile.
The water was running down the hall in the kitchen and Momma was humming to herself.
I climbed into bed and I said, “I want The Hardy Boys. The one about the missing gold. Momma and I are on chapter