Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 124971 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124971 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Me: YES.
Duffy: I mean strictly food items.
Me:
Me: Pizza?
Duffy: No need to get carried away. Tacos can be nutritious and tasty without destroying my body.
Me: Now you’re just begging for another sexual innuendo.
Duffy: Goodbye, Riggs.
While Poppins spent her day running around town trying to find gainful employment, I invested my time in scratching my balls on her couch and staring at the clock. The few weeks’ sabbatical didn’t agree with me. I’d never stayed in in my entire life and didn’t like that my body was getting used to one time zone.
That was how I found myself sitting in front of Jerry Springer reruns on cable TV. I was one pack of bonbons away from being Peggy Bundy. How could people do this day in and day out? Stay home and do nothing?
A knock on the door snapped me out of an altercation between a man who’d come to the show to have a paternity test and his stepsister, who was also his baby mama.
After unplastering myself from the couch, I dragged my ass to the door, wondering who it could be. Duffy wasn’t exactly a social butterfly. A busy bee, more like.
“Who is it?” I called out.
“It’s Charlie.”
“Duffy’s not here.” In the time that had passed since I’d moved in, she and Charlie had met for drinks twice.
“I know.”
I swung the door open and leaned against the doorframe, eyeballing him.
“What’s up, Charles? Need a cup of sugar?”
“Sugar’s poison. You know it’s more addictive than crack, right?” He gave me an intense stare. I hadn’t seen him in a while. He had a weird pattern. Sometimes he was in the hallway twice a day, but then he’d disappear for days on end.
“Been out of town?” I probed. “It’s been a hot minute.”
He yawned, looking around disinterestedly. “Not really. Some days I’m just holed up in my cave, doing art shit.”
“So what brings you here?” I asked.
“I’m doing a freelance job for an urban magazine. I need to take some pictures of buildings and scenery in Spanish Harlem. Thought you’d wanna tag along.”
“And why would you think that?” I rolled myself a joint. His eyes halted on the thing, and he grimaced. That was a plot twist. I didn’t peg him for the stuck-up type.
Charlie was nice enough, but he was a little clingy for someone who had known me for exactly two seconds.
“Because I bet you have cabin fever,” he said easily. “I used to travel the world too. I still have the bug.”
Was he me in twenty years? Fuck, I hoped not. Something dark lurked behind his eyes. Like a washed-up child actor who’d grown out of his glory days.
“Actually, it’s nice to chill for a few days,” I drawled out.
“No, it’s not.” He smiled good naturedly.
He was right, but that still didn’t mean I wanted to spend time with this stranger. I was about to marry a random. No need to befriend the entire goddamn building.
Evidently seeing the doubt on my face, Charlie rolled his eyes. “I’ll buy you a beer.”
“And lunch.” I really slipped into the poor-man role easily.
“On a budget.” Charlie jabbed a finger in my direction. “Or I’m gonna lose money on this assignment.”
“Fine, but I’m choosing the place.” I grabbed my backpack from the floor.
“You’re lucky I like to feed you.” Charlie was already taking the stairs down.
I made a note to tell Charlie I was very straight.
A half hour later, we were on Lexington Avenue. It was a mercilessly hot day. Too hot not to wonder if New York wasn’t, in fact, a section of hell. Charlie was taking pictures of children at play—faceless, or I’d have informed the authorities—small bodegas, and graffitied buildings with more character than I’d witnessed in all of Duffy’s WNT colleagues combined.
I brought my camera along and took some pictures too. When we were done, we walked across the street from a row of food stalls to a small café. We were almost at the door when someone burst open a fire hydrant.
Gallons of water sprayed everywhere, filling the street with gushing puddles. A flock of small children and teenagers ran toward it shirtless, splashing one another. Charlie and I exchanged looks. We were both thinking the same thing. This made for an epic picture. We took out our cameras at the same time and started working silently. Far enough away that they were just flashes of movement in the pictures. About a minute or two into taking the pictures, Charlie handed me his camera, a modest Nikon D5600.
“Hold this for me, will you?”
I tucked his camera into my backpack and watched this oldish, fully crazy man hightailing it toward the kids.
He ran into the thick circle of children, limping a little, like he carried an injury from when he was young, and started jumping over the puddles on the concrete floor, splashing them. They giggled and tugged him in different directions, luring him to play with them. Normally, I would look at this and think this should be illegal in all fifty states. But I couldn’t deny the innocence Charlie was oozing just then. At some point, one of the kids jumped on Charlie’s back. Charlie gave him a piggyback ride, running around the fire hydrant in circles while making siren noises.