Page 90 of We Could Be So Good
Andy can’t remember if Nick’s said anything to his family about Andy still living with him. “I keep a spare in case he locks himself out.”
“Why are you in Uncle Nick’s neighborhood?”
He goes with the first definitively heterosexual excuse that presents itself to him. “My girlfriend lives next door.” Linda, with any luck, will find this funny and play along. “So do you want me to let you in and find you a couple of Band-Aids and a glass of water or do you want to sit out here and bleed all over yourself?”
Sal gets up and grudgingly follows Andy inside, as if he’s doing Andy a huge favor. He starts grumbling at about the third floor and doesn’t let up.
When Andy pulls out the key he still keeps on a string inside his shirt, he knows he’s probably giving the lie to his story about just happening to have a key in case Nick locks himself out. He hopes Sal is too immersed in his own angst to pay much attention to what Andy’s doing. Andy’s pretty sure fourteen is the least gracious age for human males. On the other hand, he’s equally sure that Nick was exactly like his nephew at this age, and finds that he’s reluctantly charmed by the kid’s sullenness.
He fills two glasses at the tap and brings one to the sofa, whereSal is somehow managing to slouch miserably. “Will you let me take a look at your face?”
Sal shrugs and Andy peers at him. In addition to the swollen eye and the cut under his chin, there’s also a gash across one eyebrow and a couple of old cuts still healing, along with bruises in various stages of fading. “I think some soap and water should do the trick,” he suggests. “How’d this happen?”
Sal rolls his eyes. “I walked into someone’s fist.”
“How many someones?”
“Just one this time.”
He wants to ask whether the person who hurt Sal was his father or someone else, but can’t figure out how to ask, so he wets a cloth and begins gently dabbing at the worst of the cuts.
“Why’d he do it?” Andy knows as soon as he’s spoken that it’s the wrong question. There’s no good answer, and it sounds like he’s asking the kid what he did to deserve a beating.
Sal snatches the cloth from Andy’s hand and begins wiping his face himself. “Oh, the usual. I’m a f—” He breaks off. “The usual things. Don’t tell Uncle Nick.”
Andy can fill in the blank perfectly well. “Nick can keep a secret.”
Sal scowls. “Imeandon’t tell him that anyonecallsme that. I’m not—Jesus. People just say those things when they don’t like you. What are you, new?”
Obviously, Andy knows all this. He’s heard that word and all the rest of them. But this is the first time since he could reasonably apply them to himself that he’s thought about them as generic insults. He tries not to look like he’s reeling.
“Do your parents know where you are?”
“I ran away, genius. No, they don’t know.”
Andy is in over his head. “I’m going to call Nick.” He goes over to the phone and dials theChronicleswitchboard and a minute later learns that Nick isn’t in the office anymore. He isn’t surprised—Nick had planned to go to City Hall.
“Right,” Andy said. “We need to call your parents.”
Sal gets to his feet and heads for the door.
“Hear me out,” Andy says. “I’m afraid that your father is going to send some of his cop buddies over here and get your uncle in trouble for, I don’t know, kidnapping you or something.”
“And telling my dad exactly where I am will prevent thathow?” He sounds ticked off, but his eyes are suspiciously shiny. Andy has the sense that one wrong word will send him either into tears or back out onto the street.
Andy has no answer for Sal, though. All he knows is that under no circumstances should any cop enter this apartment. The sheets alone would get them arrested. Andy’s things are scattered all over Nick’s bedroom. Jesus. Okay. He has to think.
“We’re going to go next door and say hi to my girlfriend and then all three of us are going out to get pizza.” He figures Linda ought to at least get a slice or two out of this. “Why don’t you wash your face and take a couple of aspirin while I see if she’s home.”
He knocks on Linda’s door, sending up a silent prayer to any nearby deities that she’s home. She answers the door in her usual state: hair piled on top of her head, overalls paint-spattered. “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he gushes. “Which is great because you’re my girlfriend now.”
“Oh boy. This’ll be good.”
Inside, he explains. “But what I need now,” he concludes, “is for you to have Sal over for ten minutes while I clear Nick’s apartment of, uh, incriminating evidence.”
Linda blinks, apparently unfazed. “Send him over.”
Sal grudgingly goes to Linda’s for a tour of her studio and Andy tidies up the apartment as he’s never tidied anything in his life. He changes the sheets. He stuffs his razor, toothbrush, and most of his clothes into a suitcase and crams it under Nick’s bed. He makes up the bed in the spare room and only then does he realize what he should have noticed from the start.
