Myriad by Joshua David Bellin

Author:Joshua David Bellin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781915202499
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2023-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 23

I’m not dealing with this well.

It’s early evening. I pinged Vax and followed his directions to our new place. If possible, it’s even sleazier than the Sleep Rite, a ramshackle two-story motel a few miles from the airport that might as well hang a sign for the annual opioid abusers’ convention. I literally have to step over passed-out guests on my way up the stairs. It seems Vax isn’t as flush as I thought, either that or our spree at the El Swanko put a major dent in his pocketbook.

I sit in the imitation Adirondack chair on the wraparound balcony, rest my feet on the railing, and pull out the Vape Master to indulge my own addiction of choice. Vax was dying to tell me something the moment I got here, but I wasn’t dying to hear it. Plus, I drained most of the vape cartridges before I arrived, so I sent him out for refills. I don’t give a shit what they taste like at this point, because everything tastes like ashes.

I can’t get the image of Mom with Jeremy’s killer out of my mind. Not because of the apparent infidelity. Lieutenant Randi Meredith is hardly the morality police, and if I could bring myself to believe that my mom found a moment of release or even bliss in a lover’s arms, I’d be thrilled for her. But to know that it was Legion who deceived her, who made her think she was escaping something – memory, grief, life – while all the while he was dangling her like a worm on a hook… It makes my heart ache. No accompanying pain or numbness in my neck and jaw; I should be so lucky. It’s just heartsickness, pure and simple, for the woman who bore me, the woman whose torment I never knew.

Oh, Mom, how could anyone have hated you so? What did he believe you’d done to him that he could rob you of your child, your family, your pride? And that even now, when you’re utterly ruined, he could come back to rob you of what little peace remains to you before it’s all over?

I’ve tucked my knees under my chin to stare into the twilight when Vax returns from his shopping trip. He hands a dusty box to me, which I open to reveal a twelve-pack of cartridges suitable for the Vape Master and other Vape Genie products. He seems insulted when I toss it back.

“They don’t make those anymore,” he says. “I had to run all over the city before I found one in the back of an old newsstand.”

“Lovely. So now I can die from black mold instead of lung cancer.”

I collect my things while he pouts.

Inside the room, I sit on the less saggy of the two beds while Vax takes the other. He reaches into his shopping bag and pulls out a Plantplastic container with four bulbous, very green muffins.

“St. Patrick’s Day was five months ago,” I point out.

“They’re pistachio.”

“I do not like them, Sam I am.

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