The Shadow of Seth by Tom Llewellyn

Author:Tom Llewellyn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, Inc.
Published: 2015-06-22T16:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

I asked Azura where she wanted to eat. She said MSM Deli and I almost fell in love. MSM is a sandwich restaurant stuck in the middle of a Sixth Avenue convenience store, but the sandwiches are big, sloppy, and magical. They’re served with a quartered dill pickle and wrapped up neat in white butcher paper. Unwrapping the white paper around an MSM sandwich is one of the great pleasures of life in Tacoma and it didn’t matter which side of Division Street you lived on. If Azura liked MSM, maybe there was a chance we could last after all.

I picked two orange cream sodas from the cold case and ordered a Mike’s Deluxe sandwich—roast beef, cheddar cheese, Swiss cheese, sprouts, lettuce, and onions all falling out from in-between eight-inch slices of fresh French bread. We shared the giant sandwich in the back dining room.

Between bites, she said, “So what about school? When are you coming back?”

“I talked to Ms. Edelson. She said by the latest I have to be back by Monday after next.”

“So this coming Monday?”

“No. The next one. So I can take off next week.” I picked up some stray lettuce and ate it. “But I’m not sure I want to go back.”

A TV up in the corner was playing local news while we were eating. We both watched it for a few seconds without speaking.

“You have to come back, don’t you?”

“I don’t have to. I could drop out.”

“That seems stupid.”

“Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll be self taught. Like Abraham Lincoln.”

“Or Richard Branson,” said Azura.

“Who?”

“Richard Branson. Virgin Records. Virgin Atlantic Airlines. He was a high school dropout. Now he’s a billionaire.”

“Not bad. So yeah, maybe I’ll be like Richard What’s-His-Face.”

“Branson.”

“Yeah. Him. And once I’m a billionaire, I won’t have to remember people’s names.”

A grainy, unsmiling photo of Miss Irene appeared on the TV behind the blonde newscaster. It was noisy in the deli and hard to hear, but I could make out something about “wanted in connection with” and “Tacoma-woman, Eve Anomundy.”

“So that was a picture of Miss Irene?” said Azura. “She doesn’t look very nice in it.”

“I recognize that photo. It was on the wall behind the counter in Shotgun Shack. In it, Miss Irene is standing next to a famous blues musician named BB King, because he ate in the restaurant whenever his tour came through town. If you could see BB, you’d see a huge smile on his face. Checker Cab used to tease Miss Eye about how grumpy she looked in that photo. She’d say, “That’s because while you were trying to figure out how to use the camera, my biscuits were burning.”

“I guess it’s hard to tell what someone is like from a photograph,” said Azura.

I remembered the picture of Azura I stole from the driving school. I pulled it out of my pocket. “Like this photo here,” I said. “The girl in this photo looks like she doesn’t have a care in the world. But the girl across the table from me seems as weighed down as I am.

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