Slashback (Cal Leandros, #8)(34)
“I had friends who had to be kids like you. I know because when they were adults, they were very much still like you.” The smile faded somewhat, but he remained cheerful enough. “But friends go and they come.” The smile faded further at that. “About the phone?”
Go and they come? That was an odd way of saying it and the opposite of the usual “they come and they go.” “Sorry. Cal’s right, mister. We don’t have a phone.” Sophia had a cell phone, but she was elsewhere and there wasn’t a landline in the house—not one that had been paid up and worked. I aimed another look at his woefully deflated tire. “Why don’t you just change it?”
“Call me Robin . . . Rob Goodman, I mean, and hello?” He spread his arms, hands flicking inward then out to cover all of what I highly suspected he thought of as his glory and magnificence. He could be a televangelist. There was the same strong self-loving vibration coming off of him that I saw in quick flashes Sunday mornings as Cal channel surfed.
He repeated the “behold the splendor that is me” gesture, making sure I didn’t miss it. “As I said, Versace. Oil, grease, and the essence of manual labor do not come out of Versace. Ah, idea.” He fished out a wallet that was made of alligator, ostrich skin, velociraptor hide, who knew, I reflected bemused. The most exclusive of choices to be sure. “I’ll pay you fifty dollars to change it for me. You look as if you could make use of fifty dollars.” He was studying our clothing. The smile was gone now as he switched his gaze from us, stepping back on the porch to get a better look at the house that was held up by spit and the million husks of dead termites. I knew what he saw. I hadn’t lived in better, you would think I’d be used to it—accustomed—think it normal, but I didn’t. People didn’t let you. People judged. People never failed to judge.
Poor. Worthless. Lacking.
Goodman’s lips flattened and this time I couldn’t read the emotion behind it. “You know, you’re lucky. I’m in a hurry. Someplace I have to be. Important man, that’s me. In constant demand. Busy, busy, busy. There would be hell to pay if I’m not . . . wherever. I’ll pay you five hundred dollars to change the tire.”
Charity.
I would rather he’d judged instead.
I had a thing about charity. Issues. We were clothed thanks to Goodwill and the Salvation Army. Our lunches at school were free thanks to the county. Half our furniture came off someone’s curb or out of a Dumpster, but that didn’t mean I liked it even when it was anonymous and to accept it from someone standing in front of me feeling pity for me, that I hated. The humiliation burned through me to curl down deep inside like an ill-tempered cat with claws slicing into my stomach.
I was about to refuse when Cal, who thought I was an idiot on the subject, intervened. Things were things, whether you scavenged them, bought them, or people were stupid enough to just give them to you. He had the same attitude about money. He snatched the five one-hundred-dollar bills out of Goodman’s hand and elbowed me. “Nik, go on. Change the tire.”
He elbowed me again when I didn’t move and asked Goodman innocently, “What kind of watch is that? It’s really cool. I don’t have a watch. We’re too poor.” He drooped, a sad victim of a rapacious economy. His eyes had the bleak thousand-yard stare straight out of the pictures of children from Depression-era photos I’d seen in my history books. “I’m always late for school ’cause of it, the no watch. I miss so much class I can barely read. I’m shockingly illiterate. I’m afraid they’ll kick me out and I’ll end up living in one of those cardboard boxes on the street.” Finishing mournfully, he added with the perfect touch of wistfulness, “I wish I had a watch like that.”
Goodman’s smile was back and as amused as ever. More so actually. It showed more brilliant white teeth than a human being should have. With that in his arsenal, he’d leave Sophia in the dust when it came to swindling a mark. “You’re shockingly articulate to be so shockingly illiterate. Nik? That’s what your brother, Cal, called you, correct? Nik, do you think you could change my tire before your brother talks me out of my watch, clothes, and future firstborn son?”
“It doesn’t look like I have much choice.” I didn’t. Pride had to bow before money that meant college and that future I would make for us. “Na?ve of you to assume he wouldn’t get your car too though. And it’s Niko. Only Cal calls me Nik.” I caught the keys he tossed me and headed for the car.
There was a noncommittal hum that said Goodman wasn’t as worried or gullible as Cal believed. “Niko and Cal. I don’t suppose you want to tell me your last name.” Cal had shown his true colors when he’d opened the door: suspicion personified in a pair of sneakers. I was more subtle at showing it, but I was the same.
“What do you think?” I said mildly. They say what people don’t know won’t hurt them. I said what people don’t know wouldn’t hurt us. Cal’s version was what people don’t know won’t make him stab them in the foot. Three different variations and all true.
Goodman wasn’t offended by the answer. He wasn’t offended by Cal or me in any way and wasn’t that peculiar? Particularly with what Cal was currently doing. “Fair enough,” he replied as he moved his hand and wrist above Cal’s head as small fingers had drifted with invisible stealth toward his watch. Almost invisible as Goodman saw the movement clearly.