Page 11 of Guitars and Cages

“I’m sure I’ll take that under advisement the next time I’ve gotta work,” I said, glad I hadn’t let slip the fact that he’d been invited to come to the bar with me. Maybe it was a better option, to take the kid along, but Morgan had a tendency to meddle, to plant ideas into people’s heads so that others would be left little option but to go along. I was already involved deeper than I wanted to be with taking care of Rory; the last thing I needed was to add attachment, too.

“All she did was smoke and watch TV and talk on her phone about you,” he said, and I frowned.

“About me?”

“Yeah, is she really your girlfriend?”

“Sorta,” I muttered with a sigh.

“You’re gonna wait ’til I’m gone before she moves in here, right?” he asked, and I about fell onto the floor.

“Huh? What?” I sputtered, doing my best owl impersonation now.

“She was saying how she was sure it was only gonna be a matter of time before you asked her to live with you. Please don’t ask her to move in until after Mom comes to take me home,” he pleaded.

“I won’t,” I assured him, having no intention of asking her to move in with me once he was gone, either. Goddamn Morgan, I hate it when he’s right.

Chapter Five

“Hey, Uncle Asher!”

I groaned and pulled the pillow over my eyes. I didn’t feel like being Uncle Asher right now; I was more in the mood to be random drunk guy number three passed out on the bathroom tiles in the latest slacker movie. Of course for the last two weeks the most I’d had to drink was a couple beers with dinner, and I do mean the limit is a couple, as in a pair, as in two lousy, pathetic, not even buzz-worthy beers. The day before I’d draped a black pillowcase over the bottles on the counter because the sight of them was too damned tempting.

Yeah, I know, moderation; I should learn it, live it, love it, it sure as hell would save me money on booze, but truth be told it had never really been my thing. I could leave the bottle alone or I could dive to the bottom of it; there was no in between. While the temptation at times was damn near overwhelming, I left it alone because who the fuck knew an eight-year-old could find so many goddamned ways to get into shit in such a pathetically tiny damned apartment.

So since I was a victim of forced sobriety, and they frowned upon taking children into the types of establishments I usually whittled away my free time in, I’d taken to doing the only other thing I’d ever really enjoyed doing in the city: hitting the gym. At least there Rory could join me and play air hockey downstairs while I hit the weights. The twice-daily workouts amounted to me being in the best shape I’d been in since discovering that Cheerios and beer made an awesome breakfast. They also meant I was tired as hell, and small feet bouncing a small body up and down on my bed wasn’t helping at all. All it was doing was jarring sore muscles and making me wish for the millionth time that his mom would hurry back to get him.

’Course that wasn’t gonna happen, least not according to the video chat we’d had the night before, the one where she informed me that apartments were more than she’d expected, like way more, and she was still staying with a coworker while she looked for something she could afford. More and more this whole them-moving-to-Montreal thing was starting to seem like a bad idea, at least to me, but what the hell did I know? Only that the prices she was telling me seemed more like a mortgage on a decent-sized house than the rent someone should be paying for an apartment. How the hell did parents survive summer vacations and three months without being able to send their kids off to school, anyway? Between having to feed him and having to entertain him, I didn’t have time or money for much else.

At least I’d gotten a real, honest-to-God smile when I told her I’d gotten myself hired by a band that actually paid decent money. Yeah, I was still gonna be a musician, but at least it paid more than twenty bucks and all the beer I could drink. So what if it wasn’t metal? I’d always loved the blues and I could play them well. Hell, the blues were the story of my life most days.

Rory seemed pretty excited about getting to come with me to the shows, though his response of “fucking awesome” to his mom got me one of her laser-beam glares. I swear I checked my clothes for holes when she was done fixing me with that stare of hers. I’d thought having a kid around would be a nuisance, but Rory’d actually been kind of inspiring. Some days he reminded me too much of his dad, and it was hard as hell not to throw a comment or two back at him like I’d have said to his father when we were kids. More often than not, though, Rory was his own person, excited about everything, and getting me excited about things too. Like my new band.Twilight Blues. Yeah, it was gonna be nice to get back on a real stage again. I’d missed it, and who knew, maybe...

“Uncle Asher, Uncle Asher!”

Oh God, one more hour of rest, please, is that too much to ask? One more hour, and then I swear, I’ll get up and take the kid to the park or the zoo or the aquarium or the movies or wherever the hell it is that he’s gonna beg for me to take him today. I’ll get him McDonald’s, an ice-cream sundae, a slice of his favorite pizza, anything for sixty more minutes of sleep.And yet still the bouncing continued, as well as the loud repeating of my name. Apparently, silence wasn’t making the point and the kid wasn’t gonna go away without some sort of verbal acknowledgement from me. I groaned, and he began his singsong chant again. When the hell did they grow outta that shit, anyway?

“Uncle Asher, Uncle Asher, Uncle Asher, Uncle Asher!”

Every word punctuated with a bounce, goddammit all; whoever said you had to die to be in hell was a bloody fool.

“Rory!” I roared, realizing as he toppled from the bed and landed on the floor with a thud that I’d likely scared the hell out of him.

Silence, oh blessed, blessed silence.

“Uncle Asher?” he asked hesitantly now, and much, much quieter.

I groaned, as the silence had been far too fleeting.

“Rory, is the apartment on fire?” I asked, refusing to pull the pillow away from my face and acknowledge the sunlight that I knew was shining into the room.

“No.”

“Are the cops at the door?”

“No,” he responded with a bit of a sigh.

“Is the whor... err, my girlfriend at the door?” I asked, hoping he hadn’t caught my little slip.

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