The Between by Ryan Leslie

Author:Ryan Leslie [Leslie, Ryan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781953539823
Publisher: The Parliament House

As Jay changed into his costume in his kitchen—changed in his kitchen of all places!—Supriya tried to keep her mind distracted by examining Jay’s house. When they had pulled up in his truck, she thought he was playing a joke on her. One of those groan-worthy Jay-jokes that wasn’t funny to anyone but Jay.

The neighborhood, somewhere deep east of downtown, looked like it had been put into a giant oven and left to bake for, oh, a couple decades. None of the lawns had any living grass, and what few trees stood before the houses looked like they had rained down most of their leaves as tears of misery. The houses, themselves, showed all ranges of disrepair, and every set of windows sat behind rusting jail-cell bars.

Jay had opened the chain-link gate with a bowed head and a wink as if he were presenting her with his grand manor, something on par with the graveyard mansion they had left behind. For the umpteenth time in the last few weeks, she wondered what her parents would think upon meeting this peculiar, gangly, non-Indian man of uncertain employment with whom she had become intimately involved. They’d think she was the one playing the joke. Her father would refuse to shake Jay’s hand, and her mother would do what her mother did any time she encountered something about the world she couldn’t tolerate: she’d act as if Jay didn’t exist. Even if he stood right in front of her.

No amount of explanation could prepare them for Jay.

Could she even explain the match to herself?

When Jay had opened his front door, she saw that he had, indeed, been playing a joke. Just not the one she suspected. The house’s interior differed so completely from its appearance on the outside that it felt like she had walked through a gardistaro gateway into a completely different house. But of course, only she could’ve made that possible.

The entrance led directly into an open space, divided by a bar into a kitchen and a living area. The floors were covered by wide, gray slats of wood that looked like they had lived an earlier part of their life in another building, before being sanded, stained, and polished. The bar and the kitchen countertops were made of rough-hewn concrete, and the wood of the vaulted ceiling was painted black with exposed ductwork and a big, metal i-beam stretching across its length. The furniture and the kitchen appliances looked old but thoughtfully chosen and restored.

She had given Jay a perplexed look, standing there with the front door open, and he had pushed her—actually shoved her—inside.

“Don’t want the local riff-raff getting a glimpse of my pride and joy, here.” He shrugged and took on a kind of embarrassed look. “I know it ain’t as fancy as Paul’s place, but I’m working on it. This neighborhood’s gonna be top dollar in five years or so, mark my word. Maybe ten.”

“You did all this? It’s…” She hadn’t known how to describe it. The house was like Jay himself, rough around the edges but hiding something more inside.

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