Mick by Chris Lynch

Author:Chris Lynch [Lynch, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-0451-9
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-01-16T21:08:00+00:00

Welcome to the Hotel Toxic

WHAT WAS FUNNY ABOUT the whole Sully-Toy thing was the way they refused to quite warm up to each other, but wouldn’t back away either. They always seemed to be jockeying over something, like whether or not Evelyn and me together was a good idea.

“Think about it,” Sully said, wagging a very serious finger. “If she really is part Indian, with the Mick here being, well we all know what he is, do you suppose their offspring would be unusually thirsty little buggers?” Such remarks—the kind Sully made all the time—caused Toy to go stone cold, but we always eventually got past it.

And more and more the three of us spent our discretionary time around school together, with even Sully realizing that being in Toy’s presence was not too bad a place to be.

“Where do you live, Toy?” Sully asked as we sat on the school steps one afternoon.

“At home,” Toy said.

“Very good. But where is that?” We had no idea where Toy was from. Most afternoons we’d hang around in front of school or over at the store for a while, then Toy would go his way and we’d go ours. Not that I thought about it too much, but really we didn’t know anything about Toy. That was okay by me because I didn’t feel like I needed much. Not Sully, though. He needed much. These things are important to Sul.

“Why do you need to know?” Toy asked. “What does it matter where I live?”

I started to figure Toy lived someplace crappy. Crappier even than where we lived. “Back off, Sul,” I said.

“No,” Toy insisted, “that’s okay. But I want to know, what does stuff like that matter to you?”

Sully got fidgety, kicking at the steps as he talked, pacing some, tossing pebbles like three pointers into the trash barrel. He likes asking questions a whole lot more than answering them. “I don’t know. It’s just, regular stuff, y’know, background stuff. A guy likes to know things about another guy. You know.”

“No, I don’t know. Why does a guy like to know things about another guy?” Toy sometimes could tie you up with his blank voice, his Store-24-clerk I-don’t-get-it way of talking. Some of it was real, some of it acting, but all of it was killing Sully.

“Dammit, Toy, you know what I mean. Like, ‘Toy,’ I mean, what kind of a name is that? Where does it come from? What are you? What are your parents? Y’know?”

Sully fidgeted faster and faster. The deeper he sank into this thing he was digging, the more he squirmed. Toy sat calmly, hunched, his elbows on his knees, his hands folded in front of his chin. Sully swam like a fish in a tank in front of him. Slowly, Toy started nodding.

“You do. You do understand,” Sully was thrilled to say.

Toy continued nodding. “No,” he said.

“Maybe this is a good time to go,” Sully said, clapping his hands and yanking me up from my spot beside Toy. We started walking, and Toy sat.

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