Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 143382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 717(@200wpm)___ 574(@250wpm)___ 478(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 143382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 717(@200wpm)___ 574(@250wpm)___ 478(@300wpm)
I was filling a customer’s water glass as she spoke to him.
I almost overfilled it, because when she was done, he got up and followed her to the kitchen.
Peculiar.
Raye was passing me, so I asked, “What’s that about?”
“Obviously, I have no idea,” she answered coolly.
No thaw there, then.
Whatever.
I was throwing some dirty plates in the bus bin when Tito’s voice came at me, making me jump.
“If you could follow me, Jessie,” he requested.
I looked to him.
I looked to the girls who were all in the vicinity, watching us.
I turned back to him and nodded.
We went through the kitchen to the staff room and then the back door.
Tito opened it and walked out. I followed and stopped in my tracks.
Homer was loitering at the door, and he was with a scruffy, youngish (about my age, maybe a bit older (I was thirty-three)) Black man who was shifting foot to foot.
“Homer,” I greeted, shocked. “How did you get here?”
“Walked,” Homer replied.
I quickly had to get over the fact they’d walked probably a good ten miles to get to the back door of The Surf Club, because Homer was sunken into himself. Not in his safe space, exposed, vulnerable. The King of the Encampment was a memory. Although I recognized him visually, everything else about him had changed.
My heart crunched, and I offered, “Let’s go sit in the garden.”
He shook his head curtly and said, “General Grant has something to tell you.”
“General Grant?” I asked.
“Ulysses S. Grant,” the Black guy said, jerking a thumb at himself.
My heart crunched more at a Black man referring to himself by a dead white president’s name, because I seriously doubted at his age that was his real name.
“Hey, Mr. Grant,” I said.
“General Grant,” he corrected.
Totally not his real name.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
Tito said nothing, but remained close and got closer when Homer did.
“Iraq,” Homer muttered. “Afghanistan,” he went on. “Decorated sniper. Now…this,” he finished.
My ticker couldn’t take much more as I turned to a veteran of this great country wearing filthy clothes, sporting nappy hair and dancing foot to foot.
Homer looked to Tito. “You need to leave, or he won’t talk. She’s ours. You’re not ours. But she’s safe with us. None of us would harm Jessie.”
Tito tipped his head to look up at me through his shades, and I saw his bushy white eyebrows rise over the frames.
“I’m good,” I assured.
Tito hesitated.
“Promise,” I said.
Tito nodded once, but I could tell he didn’t like it even if I couldn’t see his eyes, before he went in the back door.
Once it closed, I returned my attention to Homer and the General.
“You can tell her,” Homer urged the General.
“Gotta get back to Mary,” the General stated.
“We’ll go back, once you tell her,” Homer replied.
“Mary’s all alone,” the General returned.
“Mary?” I whispered to Homer.
“She’s new,” Homer whispered back. “General Grant looks after the new ones.”
Of course he did.
“Boomer’s looking after Mary,” Homer reminded the General. “But you’re right. We gotta head back so you can look in on her, which means now, you gotta talk to Jessie.”
The General moved foot to foot then his body jolted, and he looked behind him.
I looked behind him.
At nothing.
God, this guy was killing me.
“General,” Homer called him back to us.
The General turned to me. “Street Warrior.”
That was all he said.
Therefore, I asked, “Sorry?”
“Street Warrior,” the General repeated. “He’s one of ’em. Keeps the darkness back. Keeps it back.”
I wasn’t liking this—at all—even if I didn’t get it.
At all.
I looked to Homer to see if he could offer any illumination.
Homer’s whiskered lips were pressed tight.
“What’s a street warrior?” I asked him.
He didn’t answer because the General was moving quickly toward the side of the building.
Homer followed.
I followed.
The General checked the side of the building, then he looked at Homer and said, “Mary.”
I peered around the corner and saw no woman, just a direct shot to the traffic on Indian School.
“We’ll head back,” Homer promised him.
“I’ll take you back,” I offered.
Homer’s faded blue eyes shot to me in surprise just as the General jumped alarmingly when the back door opened.
Harlow and Raye came out, each carrying a thick, foil-wrapped burrito in one hand and our largest lidded paper cup in the other.
“They’re my friends,” I said hurriedly as the women made their approach. “Harlow and Raye. Good friends. You can trust them.”
The girls glanced quickly between the two men before Raye said to Homer, “Tito thought you might want something to eat and drink.”
To my shock, the General went right up to Harlow, took the burrito and said, “Thank you kindly, ma’am.”
Harlow offered the drink as the General peeled back the foil and paper. “Water,” she told him. “But I can get you a soda or something if you’d like.”
He munched into the burrito and took the drink, shaking his head. Not even swallowing, he munched more.
While this happened, Homer extricated a plastic bag from his pocket and wrapped it around the burrito Raye was holding out to him.