Moondogs - Alexander Yates [88]
“Those little fuckers hold a grudge. You’re getting off easy if they quit after breaking your shit. When I was young my mother sat on a Duwende and to get even they ganged up and pushed her down the stairs. She was on crutches for months and never sat down again without saying: Lookout, here I come, get off my chair, please.” He stared down at her, sunlight glinting in his braces and eyes. “Or, it could be she thinks you’re a bruha. Shaking the place up with some black magic. Look at you, bruha. Making earthquakes when you get off.”
Monique sat up. “I don’t care what she thinks. I care what she says and doesn’t say. What if she calls Joseph?”
Reynato was quiet for a moment before speaking. “Again, this is a small-scale problem. Just call him first and say you canned her. You caught her stealing, or something. Then, on the off chance she says anything, he’ll chalk it up to disgruntled.”
“I’m not going to lie about her.”
“You lie about me all the time. Listen, if you’re feeling guilty about it, I could offer her a job. I’ll add a grand a week to whatever you were paying. Everybody wins.”
“What about your wife?”
He laughed—a big, round sound. “If my wife believed the help I’d have been divorced years ago.”
REYNATO HAD A BUSY DAY AHEAD, but he stayed to help Monique clean. They swept broken glass and repotted overturned plants by the window. He righted Leila’s computer and got the Internet working again. Monique chased the lovebird and the gecko, trying to trap them under a plastic colander, without any luck. Reynato offered to bring his cat over—he had this incredibly obedient, incredibly smart black cat. But the kids would have been devastated if anything happened to the pets. Sooner or later they’d get tired, and Monique would catch them.
They cleaned Shawn’s room last. Reynato crawled around on all fours, catching feed-crickets in unbroken spice jars. Monique vacuumed mulch and wood-chips out of the burned carpet. Just being in there made her feel like some kind of intruder. Joseph thought it essential that the children’s rooms be a “private space” and Shawn defended his as though life and honor depended on it. Only Amartina was allowed in to get laundry, make the bed and feed the gecko when Shawn let it starve.
Reynato chased a cricket under the bed and stayed there for a moment, his butt and legs protruding. When he spoke his voice had a muffled, echoing quality. “Do you want bad news you can ignore or bad news you should probably know about?”
Monique shut the vacuum off. “I want both.”
“All right. Well, the bad news you can ignore is that I’ve found your son’s porn stash. Hardcore but not scary-freaky. And … how to put this delicately … well used.”
“What’s the other bad news?”
Reynato’s legs twisted as he shimmied out from under the bed. He stood, his left hand cupping something translucent—a zip-lock baggie. Inside was a stubby little glass pipe, a plastic lighter and a tiny smattering of gray-green pot. Monique felt punched in her abdomen. “Hey,” he said, “hey, no need to get so upset.”
She snatched the bag from him and sat on Shawn’s perfectly made bed. “I’m going to murder him.”
“This is nothing.” He sat beside her and rubbed a hand up and down her back. “There’s hardly an hour’s worth of fun in here. And the pipe looks new, no resin burns and no ash. Either he cleans it like a pro or he’s only used it a handful of times.”
“He’s thirteen.”
“That’s young. But I’ve seen younger do worse.”
If only Joseph were here, she thought. He’d feel so fucking vindicated. She unzipped the baggie and took the pipe out, turning it over in her hands. Reynato took it from her. He put all the pot into the bowl and it was hardly half full. He lit it, puffed and coughed.
“Oh my. Can’t get this just anywhere.” He offered her the pipe.
“I could lose my clearance for that.”
“You could lose your clearance for a lot of things. Many of which are things you’ve done. With me. In that room and in others.” He offered again. The pungent, familiar smell ringed their bodies. She shook her head. “Suit