Rayne & Delilah's Midnite Matinee(82)

“Um,” I say.

“This isn’t stealing,” Divine says. “You can’t steal something people have willingly thrown away.”

“Kinda you can. Also, this is not stealing is never the way you want to start a phrase.”

“If I have to sell clothing on the street like some sort of Dickensian ragamuffin, I want to see what my options are,” Divine says, jerking at his arm. “I seem to be…stuck here. Caught up on something. Can one of you—”

“Good luck,” I say. “We’re leaving. Come on, Lawson.” I pick a direction and start walking, Lawson at my side.

“Wait a minute!” Divine calls after us. “What about my honorarium?”

“Hono-what-ium?”

“My honorarium. My fee. You don’t think I go around dispensing show business advice and knowledge for free, do you? I have to make a living.”

“If you’re legitimately asking me for more money, you can blow your honorarium out of your assholararium. As if I even have any money left after your little dinner.”

“You owe me!”

“For what?!”

“Imparting showbiz knowledge. Connecting you with an executive producer. That warrants a finder’s fee.”

“You told weird stories about making fried eggs on a hotel room iron with Stevie Nicks and doing cocaine in a hot-air balloon with Nicolas Cage and took us to talk to some loser in the human-hornet wars. We’re good here.”

“You ingrate! Typical millennial!”

“I’m not a millennial, and also that’s a dumb thing old people say. Anyway, this has been as fun as holding in a fart, but we really must go.”

“Should not hold in poots. Is bad for liver,” Yuri says.

I clench the sides of my head and say through gritted teeth: “THE BODY’S FART TUBES ARE NOT CONNECTED TO—”

“Is my opinion,” Yuri says.

“You know what? I’m not doing this. I refuse.” I turn and keep walking. Lawson puts his hand on my back protectively.

“Yuri! Collect my honorarium!” Divine hollers.

Yuri starts toward us. I turn and point at him. “Do. Not. Touch me. I will call the cops on you so fast.”

Yuri only moves more swiftly.

Lawson gets between Yuri and me, holding out his arm. “Bro, not one more step, or I will straight-up knock you out.”

I have my phone in hand, ready to dial 911. Yuri reaches past Lawson and swats my phone. It sails away, flipping end over end.

I’m not even able to register vocal disapproval before Lawson strikes, punching Yuri in the face with a meaty thwack. He assumes a fighting stance. Yuri stops, momentarily dazed, puts his fingertips to his lips, and pulls them away, checking for blood. His face hardens, and he raises his fists. I would feel a lot better if Lawson’s punch had done more damage.

“Get him, Yuri!” Divine hollers. “Fisticuffs time!”

Yuri moves with shocking nimbleness. He throws a punch; Lawson ducks. I almost feel the wind from it.

“Stop!” I shout, but to no avail. And this doesn’t look like the sort of neighborhood where shouts of “stop” are uncommon.

Yuri throws a vicious uppercut that Lawson dodges. But Lawson catches his heel on the ground and falls onto his back.

Yuri is on him in an instant.





We sit in Dad’s driveway. Not a word passed between us on the ride back.

“So,” I say.

“So,” Dad says.

“I guess I don’t really know where we go from here.”

“Me neither.”

I struggle to say it. “Do you…want to stay in touch?”

He folds in on himself, looking away from me, out into the darkness filled with chirping frogs and buzzing insects. He rests his elbow on the windowsill and bows his head into his palm, covering his eyes. Seconds tick by. He looks up, exhausted and hammered down, suddenly a decade older. “DeeDee.”

Anything but “yes” is “no,” and “DeeDee” isn’t “yes.” Still, I ask, “Is that a no?”

“I…can’t. It hurts too much.”

Fresh tears, spiked with anger, replace the ones that have dried to salt on my cheeks. “You don’t know the first thing about hurt.”

“I do,” he says softly. “I even know what it’s like to lose your dad.”

“And yet you did it to me.”

“I had no choice.”

“So you said.”

“I’m trying to start a new life. I—I can’t live with a constant reminder of what a failure I was to you.”

“Won’t live. Are scared to live.”

“That too.”

“You’re pathetic.”

He absorbs it like a punch to the chin. He stares at the floor and doesn’t speak. It’s fine. I didn’t want him to try to argue.

I open the car door. “I have something for you. Hang on.” I walk to Josie’s car and get my last Midnite Matinee DVD. I go back and sit in Dad’s Jeep. “Here.” I hand him the DVD.

“Is this—this your show?”

“Yeah. I want you to watch it.”

He holds it in both hands. “DeeDee, I don’t think I—”