Paradise (pt 9)

The boy climbs out of the pool and dries off – it is night, and the sky is green and the air is heavy and wet. He was watching tv up in the room but the girlfriend was crying in the bathroom so he left. His father is at the bar, talking to a guy. The boy sits down with them and asks for a Pepsi. It’s my kid brother, his father says and the guy shakes his hand; his father has done this for years and sometimes people believe him. Once when he did this the boy made a crack about his father’s dentures, and his father choked him hard enough to leave bruises.

Where is she? his father asks.

In the bathroom. She’s got the phone in there talking to somebody.

His father rolls his eyes and gets up, leaving money on the bar. The guy orders another drink, and gets the boy another Pepsi. The boy makes up stories about his father being an assassin for hire; the guy laughs.

When the guy heads into the lobby bathroom the boy follow him, and when he asks the guy if he wants a blowjob the guy just stares at him, and then he knocks him down. He balls his fist up in the boy’s shirt and cocks back his other, shaking, and he demands to know how old the boy is.

Fifteen, he says.

The guy can’t stop from punching him, but redirects it to his shoulder. The boy shouts; the guy chokes him hard. The boy tries to say that he’s sorry, but he can’t breathe. Everything is so solid all of sudden.

The bathroom door opens and a man walks in and the guy lets the boy go and the boy runs, into the elevator and up to their floor, and afraid that the guy followed him he charges through the walls looking for his father but neither of them are there.

The boy gets the Bible out of the dresser and holds it between his hands and promises God that he’ll never do anything like that again. Never, ever again.

*

What happened to you? his father asks him in the morning.

The boy has large, black bruises around his neck. You’d have to be a real dummy not to figure out that they were made by fingers.

I fell down, the boy tells him. He closes his suitcase and puts it by the door.

His father cracks his knuckles.

Okay, he says.

*