Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill by Lee Wind

Author:Lee Wind [Lee Wind]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: -
Publisher: -
Published: 2018-07-09T00:00:00+00:00

The adults decided Rhonda would take the case pro bono—which meant Wyatt’s family wouldn’t have to pay her. In return, Wyatt’s parents would let Rhonda and Martin stay with them for a week or so. And, instead of the Confederate flag, the B and B would fly the thirty-three-star and the thirty-five-star Union flags, from the beginning and end of the war. And the blog could stay up, for now.

Room 1, down the hall from the Lincoln Room and in the front of the house with a big bay window, would be Rhonda’s room and temporary office. Martin would stay in Room 2, closer to the stairs. Closer to Wyatt’s room, one flight up and down the hall.

Outside, the darkness had lightened to an inky blue. Wyatt spent a half hour in the B and B sign’s light, trying to remove the pink graffiti. It wouldn’t come off. Dumping the useless cleaning stuff in the downstairs closet, he peeked in the kitchen. Rhonda sat at the table with Wyatt’s dad and mom, using a red pen to scribble notes on the lawsuit the mayor had hit them with. After Von Lawson’s show, local businesses were going to lose a lot of money. Money they didn’t have if they lost the lawsuit. What would happen then?

He wondered where Martin was. Probably in his room …

Wyatt searched his brain for a reason to go up there. Clean towels! He raced up the stairs to the laundry room on the third floor. Then, arms loaded with a pretty good excuse, he walked down the flight of stairs to Martin’s room.

The blue guitar was outside the doorway, propped against the blue-gray and orange-brown leaves of the hallway wallpaper. Wyatt wondered if he should pick it up and carry it in for him, or if that wouldn’t be cool. He was about to ask but froze when he saw him. Martin was wearing plastic gloves and a white face mask with yellow rubbery head straps. He had the mattress off the bed and a giant silk bag halfway over it.

“What are you doing?” Wyatt asked.

“Dust mites,” Martin said, carefully pulling the bag all the way over the mattress and then zipping it shut along the side. “You ever seen one in a microscope? They’re like aliens.”

He finished with the mattress, and then, like it might bite him, cautiously fit another silky bag over the room’s pillow. Once that was zipped shut, he pulled his gloves inside out, careful not to touch any of the parts that had been on the outside. Putting the gloves in a plastic bag, he knotted it and put that in the trash can under the antique desk. Then he took off the face mask. “Mom says it’s like I go all Howard Hughes, but we’re in a different place every couple of days….” He shrugged, zipped open his rolling carry-on, and pulled out his own sheets.

“We do wash things here,” Wyatt said, putting the towels on the desk.

“It’s just allergies. I’ve kind of got it down.

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