Ten Thousand Saints - Eleanor Henderson [45]
“It was not. It was another lady friend, after. Before I met the lady friend I have now. Come down and join me.”
Jude climbed down from the loft, every muscle still sore. He took a seat beside his father on top of a knit blanket and pillow. “You slept here last night?” Gratefully he took the bong and, with the barbecue lighter, fired it up. It had been a few days. It hit him hard.
“You can see why Eliza’s mother doesn’t spend much time here. It’s my master plan. If you’re going to bring a woman home, make it her home. That’s a good rule in general, but especially considering the size of this place. You okay?”
Jude was coughing like an amateur.
“Am I making you nervous with the girl talk? Listen, you’re going to see a lot more girls with that new haircut of yours.”
“You like it?” Jude rubbed his head, then his chin, a habit he’d picked up in the last thirty-six hours. He’d sprouted some bristle.
“No, I mean you’ll actually be able to see them, without all that hair in your eyes. Do you see the positive influence I’m having on you already? I thought your mother was going to kiss my feet when she saw you.”
“It wasn’t you. My hair was all”—he coughed again—“knotty.”
“Take it easy, champ.” Les gave Jude’s back a few slaps. “You haven’t tried reefer till you’ve tried Uncle Lester’s reefer. Do you know what today is?”
Jude took another hit. “Saturday?”
“Monday. The fifteenth. Distribution day.” He looked at the clock on the wall. “In exactly five minutes, my first guy will be here for a pickup. They come one by one. Six guys in six hours, twice a month, in and out, clean as can be. Don’t even have to leave the apartment.” He lit a cigarette. “This business is a science, like anything else. You have to have a schedule. You have to have rules. So, like us.”
“What?”
“This new arrangement. There’s some other matters to discuss.”
“Like what?”
“Like I snore. I move my bowels from six-fifteen to six-thirty-five every morning. And I own a handgun.”
“Does it shoot?”
“That’s what they do, champ. It’s in a case under the kitchen sink. A thirty-eight special. I call it McQueen. Don’t touch it unless I tell you to, in which case it’s loaded, so watch out.”
“Why would you tell me to?”
Les gave an I-know-nothing shrug. “Also, there’s the matter of a curfew.”
“Great,” said Jude, but when he thought about it, his brain stretching the word, softening it—was his dad’s shit that good?—it seemed a shiny fragment of adult vocabulary, somehow alluring. He’d never had a curfew before. Delph and Kram did. “When is it?”
Outside the window, a bird flickered on a tree branch. A bird in New York. All his life Jude had seen the same birds, and this one—he’d never seen it before. It was an amazement. When he thought about walking downstairs and outside into the daylight it was difficult to control his nerves. “Well,” Les said, “if you can demonstrate that you’re in possession of your faculties, if you return eventually from wherever it is you’re going, which proves you can remember where you live, if you’re wearing the same clothes you went out in, if you can continue to convince me, Hey, Dad, I’m just a kid having fun, I drank a beer at the Centre Pub, or what have you, but I don’t have a knife sticking out of my stomach—then I’m willing to forgo a curfew.”
“Did Mom say that was okay?”
Les stood, put out his cigarette, picked up the blanket, and began sloppily to fold it. “It doesn’t matter what your mother thinks. Look, I know she has serious concerns about you staying here. I can’t blame her. Would you help me with this thing?” Jude stood up and took two corners of the blanket. “Put it this way. If you don’t get into trouble, your mother doesn’t have to know about it. Now, we happen to have different definitions of trouble. Your mom wants me to be a rehab clinic for you, man, but come on, you’ve got a liking for this stuff I can dig.” Jude matched one of his corners to the other. “But I happen to have a classy operation here that could get screwed up overnight if, you know, Officer Friendly