his top leg. Not a hard lashing out, not hard for Freedy, but Saul was old and scrawny. He fell without any resistance Freedy could feel.
Saul started scrambling to get up. Freedy, still needing that breath, a little sore here and there, started getting up too, but slow, like Superman exposed to whatever that stuff was, k — something. Slow for Freedy and scrambling for Saul turned out to be about the same. Saul had a sharp, shiny hooked thing in his hand, something from the yard Freedy didn’t even know the name of. Didn’t matter. That nose with the hair growing on top? Freedy flattened it with one punch, a left hand by necessity, flattened it flush into the rest of Saul’s mean little face.
That left Saul and the bigger big boy motionless on Ronnie’s floor, the smaller big boy crawling on his belly toward the door making moaning sounds, Ronnie sitting up in bed, his room a mess.
“Hold it right there,” Freedy said to the smaller big boy.
“Don’t,” he said, and kept moving.
Freedy went over to him, bent down.
“Don’t,” said the smaller big boy.
“What are you going to do about it?” said Freedy, and he tore that black satin jacket with the gold letters and the gold crest right off the smaller big boy’s back.
Freedy walked over to the bedside, putting on the jacket, not easily because of his right arm. He looked down at Ronnie. Ronnie squinted up at him.
“Freedy?”
“Yeah?”
“Mind getting me a glass of water?”
“Guess not.”
Freedy stepped over the smaller big boy and went down the hall.
“And maybe a couple aspirin,” Ronnie called after him. “In the drawer by the sink.”
Freedy came back with water and two aspirin in his hand. Ronnie took the aspirin off his open palm, gulped them down.
“Ronnie?”
“Yeah?”
“Call it even, right?”
Ronnie nodded, winced, stopped nodding.
Down in Ronnie’s basement, on his way out, Freedy had a moment of… not weakness, more like he was tired for a second, what with missing a night’s sleep and all. He sat down on the bench, the padded bench they used for presses, and swallowed an andro. What was this? Three left? As for the meth, he had enough for about that many hits in the Baggie in his pocket, the main supply stowed under his bed in the “Little Boy” room. The question: was this the time to go back and get it? Saul had said he hadn’t called the cops and Freedy believed him. You could say what you liked about Saul Medeiros, but he was true to his word. That meant it was some pot deal of his mother’s, nothing to do with him. So it was safe to go back and get it, right?
Or wrong. Freedy couldn’t make up his mind, which was weird. Just fatigue, probably, and his right arm dangling like that. Good time for a tweak, in fact. What was he thinking of?
Freedy used up a little of his meth, had an idea immediately. Why not call and find out? Ronnie’s cordless lay right there on the stereo. Freedy dialed the number.
“Hello?” said his mother.
“Hi,” said Freedy.
She lowered her voice. “What happened in California?”
She’d mixed it all up. “Happened? I told you to say I’d gone back there, that’s all.”
She spoke faster. “I did. But they’re saying they’ve got a war-”
In the background a man said, “Who is that?”
The line went dead.
Something happened in California? Not that he was aware of. She’d mixed it all up: no surprise there, her head full of smoke, year after year. Still, probably not a pot thing in this case, so it wasn’t safe to go home yet. When would it be? What about the money she’d promised, the ten grand, plus travel expenses? She ruined everything. He pounded the bench, in his frustration forgetting and using his right hand. Made the shoulder, the arm feel a little better, actually.
What now? He needed to sleep, to rest, to sort things out. Where? Only one place he could think of.
Freedy popped up the vent hood behind the hockey rink. He heard sirens down in the flats. Not unusual. He glanced around; no one in sight, nothing to see but his own footprints, leading right to him across the snowy playing fields. What could he do about that? Nothing.
But maybe he wouldn’t have to. As he watched, the sky, already dark for even a cloudy day, darkened more, and the first flakes started falling. The wind picked up. Snow and wind would take care of the footprints for him, like nature was on his side. Luck, on this lucky day, was still with him. One or two more breaks and he’d be golden.
26
“All my writings are fish-hooks… If nothing got caught I am not to blame. There were no fish.” With reference to Nietzsche’s critics, describe three major arguments of the fish that didn’t bite.
The aquarium was missing. They were sitting in the twins’ room on the third floor of Lanark, Nat at one of the desks, Izzie on Grace’s bed. Outside, the sky, a morning sky but dark, darkened more, and a few flakes began falling, almost invisible in the weak light.
“Where’s Lorenzo?” Nat said.
“We took him down to the cave. She-Grace wanted company in case it was a long wait.”
They fell silent, waited. After a while Izzie picked up a mirror, made a few adjustments to her hair. “I wish you wouldn’t be like this,” she said.
“Like what?” Nat said.
“Brooding, or whatever it is. What’s the point? It’s done.”
“Maybe not.”
“Maybe not? The only way to undo it is to make us look like idiots.”
Nat said nothing. There was an unfamiliar sharpness in her tone; he put it down to tension.
“You know what your problem is?” she said.
Tension, for sure. He’d never heard her on edge like this, not close. She wasn’t herself. Perhaps the girls had made a mistake: maybe Izzie should have waited in the cave while Grace handled things up here.
“What’s my problem?” Nat said.
“Fear of success,” Izzie told him. “Which I always took for psychobabble. Now I’m thinking it exists after all.”
He felt that one, so close to ambition should be made of sterner stuff. It didn’t matter now. Someone with the money was on the way. Someone gave the money to Izzie. Izzie gave the money to no one. Grace emerged. A little hanky-panky, then back to normal life. It sounded simple, like a beginning case study in economics.
She came over to the chair, stood behind him. “Let’s not fight,” she said, and rubbed the back of his neck. “Mmm,” she said. Her hands were cold.
There was a knock at the door. Nat’s eyes met Izzie’s. Was her heart suddenly beating faster too? Probably not, from the casual way she said, “Come in.”
The door opened: a UPS man in his brown uniform.
