The last secret_ a novel - Mary McGarry Morris [6]
“Trying to find a magazine, that's all.” Really, refuge from the rain.
“Which one? There aren't many we don't have.”
“Newsweek.” He could care.
“Here you go.” Hands it over. Sending him on his way.
“Hmm, let's see. Maybe this isn't the one,” he stalls, turning pages.
“You're getting it all wet.”
“You're the one that gave it to me,” he growls, stares hard, until she leaves.
Nobody's fool, that's for sure. Not after all he's been through, but right now, at this very moment, he finds himself on the high end of chance. Pure luck, that's what this is, her picture in this magazine, picked at random, in this drugstore the rain drove him into. He grins. A different last name. He's long ago forgotten the other one. But the face jumps out at him. How many Noras look like that? Strong, thin features, full mouth, deep-set eyes from what he can see. Hard to tell. He studies the picture. He'd almost forgotten. Young and soft, mostly what he remembers. He chuckles. A priest standing next to her. Family owns a newspaper. She wants to give back. They all do nowadays, the rich bitches. Well, give some to him, then. Yeah. Least she can do. Share with those less fortunate. Proud bastard like himself, two nights on a train station bench. Talk about democracy, country's so busy worrying about minorities it's lost sight of real citizens, people like himself His great-grandfather helped build the transcontinental railroad, two uncles fought in Korea, one met Jack Dempsey once, something like that. Details get fuzzy. Static in the airwaves, voices fading in and out. That's his thing, sensitivities, knowing what's on someone's mind before they say it. So when they do, it's confusing because he's already heard it, feels like that, anyway. The shelter is the last place on earth he wants to go. Sleeping on a cot with drunks and crazies. He folds his arms to hide his shaking hands. His medicine's in his padlocked room. He tucks the magazine down the back of his pants and runs outside into the gale-driven rain. Long way, but his mind's on other things. Opportunity. His future.
Wet hair drips into his eyes. The puddle at his feet is from his clothes. He can't even use the bathroom until he's been evaluated. He sits in the waiting room. The intake counselor is on break. He angles his head to see past the flashing lights that come with the headache. This one's bad. Tension. Stress. Closes his eyes, waits for his name to be called. Eddie Krippendort. The counselor's questions confuse him. Yeah, you try thinking straight when the top of your head's gonna blow, he tells him.
Once, when he was little, his mother smashed the side of his head in, that's what happened. That's how he always tells it. She hated him, but it wasn't his fault, he just shouldn't've been born, she said. Lydia Krippendort, insisting she wasn't his mother, when he knew better. But he let her have her illusions, crazy woman that she was. One day she gave him away. Just like that, to a perfect stranger on a busy street. They locked her up. End of story.
“How old're you, Eddie?”
“Fifty, sixty.” He laughs. “Whatever works.”
“Any booze, drugs, on you?”
“No, sir.”
“Been here before?”
“Once.”
“When?”
“Year ago? I forget.”
“You on disability?”
“No.” Nothing preventing him from getting a job, one doctor wrote. Sociopathic tendencies. Reading upside down, among his many talents. Set fire that night to the back of the doctor's office.
“You work?”
“When I can.”
“What do you do?”
“Whatever.”
“What was your last job?”
“Vice president of Microsoft.”
“Come on, Eddie. I just gotta fill in the blank, that's all I'm doing.”
“Sparkle Car Wash on Marquand.”
“When?”
“December.”
“How long?”
“One fucking day.”
Looks over his smudged glasses. What? Like he's offended?
“You know what it feels like, swabbing the back of a car, freezing cold water running down your arms and legs?” He wants to work, hates being broke. When