Moondogs - Alexander Yates [138]
“Which one is your son?” she asks.
He looks from her, to the door, which is still open. Out in the living room Kelog the rooster walks to and fro, dragging his spur across the tile, looking strung out. It strikes him odd that he knows the rooster’s name and not hers. He’s never heard anyone use her name.
“That one …” he scooches forward and touches his son’s face on the screen, leaving a smudge.
“He’s good-looking,” she says.
Howard nods, looking at his good-looking kid. He blinks rapidly, trying to focus on Benny’s face. There’s something else going on there. Something he got a hint of when he heard Benny speaking. His son looks … off. Not torn up. But weirded-out. Like he thinks he shouldn’t be there. Like he’s doing a favor for a not-so-close friend—a favor that leaves him reluctant and chilly. And there is no doubt in Howard’s mind, now. Benny knows about Solita, knows—he’s sure—about her kid. She has found him and told him. Just when Benny was getting over the story of Howard the scumbag cheat, just when he was moving past Costa Rica, just when it looked like the two of them could become close again, Solita has fucked it up. Not that Howard blames her. Fucking things up is what she should do—no one is going to stick up for her otherwise. Never mind that June probably isn’t even his. The timing works, sure, but come on—the kid’s darker than even his mother. It’s no skin off Howard’s back to give them some cash every few weeks. As far as he’s concerned he’s doing her a favor by letting that shoddy claim of paternity go unchallenged. But Benny, he’s sure, will not see it that way. Without Howard there to say his piece, Benny will become permanently committed to the weirded-out, distant bullshit they call a relationship. And that won’t do at all. They’ve already wasted too much time on this stupidity.
Howard pushes up off the floor and stands. His knee is still stiff, but he hobbles out to the living room with little trouble. Ignacio’s wife rushes after.
“Hey!” she yells. “Hey! If he sees you doing that he’ll break your fingers. He’ll cut your nose off.”
“Ignacio’s not here,” Howard says. “Is he?”
“He’s here.” Her voice is wobbly. “Get back inside or I’ll call him.”
“No … he would have come in as soon as I turned the TV down,” Howard says. He feels like such an idiot. He’s already squandered ten minutes—enough time to have saved his life a few times over. He goes for the nearest door and pulls it open. Closet.
“Which way is out?”
She doesn’t answer. She runs into the kitchen and comes back with a wok in her hand, lifted like a clumsy mace. He takes the wok out of her hand. She slaps him on the wound that used to be his ear and he howls, pushing her, roughly, onto the loveseat. He rushes out of the living room, down a short hallway with unfinished walls. There’s a door at the end that looks to have natural light leaking under the crack. Just as he’s about to reach for it Kelog appears, placing himself with a flapping jump between Howard and the door. Howard looks down at the rooster. It leaps up at him, wings beating his face, beak pecking at his bruises. He tries to push it away but feels a shocking, intense, unreasonable pain. He backs up, trips over his heels and falls ass over head to the floor.
Howard’s forearms are covered in a hot mess of deep cuts. Kelog approaches him, talons clicking horribly on the tile floor, cockfighting spur bright with blood. Howard tries to kick the bird as it approaches but it sidesteps, gazing at him with patient evil. Howard feels as though he’s losing his mind. “I’m going to kill you,” he says to the rooster. “I’m going to break you open with my hands.”
He swings out and catches the rooster with an open-palmed slap that sends it tumbling across the hall and hangs a constellation of green feathers in the air. He stands and stumbles after the