Wait,Casey?—
“What areyoudoing here?” Will demands, crossing his arms over his chest. Or, at least, he attempts to cross his arms over his chest; he forgets he’s holding the broom and pokes himself aggressively in the side of the cheek with the handle, and has to settle for putting one hand on a hip instead.
“What amIdoing here?” Casey repeats, incredulous. Will realizes, rather belatedly, that the other man seems to be holding one of Jillian’s ancient parrot-headed umbrellas, left unused in the stand these last thirty-odd years. “I live here! What areyoudoing here?”
“Youlivehere?” Will says, feeling his own eyes bulge. “You… I… This is my childhood home! Where I grew up! Those missing balusters in the staircase—” Will points a slightly trembling finger and then blinks, surprised, and continues, “Or, well, thereusedto be two missing balusters there, where I accidentally pulled them out trying to climb up the—oh, it doesn’t matter! What do you mean youlivehere?”
Casey throws his hands in the air, which in the tight space of the landing causes him to, instead, thwack his hand hard against the broom handle. He hisses and shakes it, then says, “Oh, this is ridiculous. What were you going to do with abroom, and—I’m—just—come downstairs!” He wheels around and stalks back down to the first floor, Will hot on his heels in irritation and eagerness to put the stupid broom down.
The second Casey’s feet are off the stairs, however, he turns back to Will, trapping him on the final step. “I live here! Who do you think fixed the balusters? Who do you think got the hot water back on, and the electric, and the gas?—”
“The hot water and—you—God, can you at least let me through to put thisdown?” Will snaps. The house hadalwayshad hot water when he was growing up, and if the electric or the gas was out, it was never for more than a couple of days. How exactly had his father been living? “Or is it critical for this conversation that I be ready to sweep at a moment’s notice?”
Casey crosses his arms, and, with a smirk, says, “I should make you take it back upstairs. It’s theupstairsbroom, as anyone wholived herewould know.”
“Oh, for the love of—” Will doesn’t bother finishing the sentence, he just turns around and stomps back up the stairs, ignoring it when Casey groans and calls after him that he wasn’tserious. When, to make a point to precisely no one, Will has carefully put it back exactly in the same position as he found it, he stomps back down the stairs and says, “There. The broom is back in its home and we can all die happy. May I pass now?”
“Christ, you are irritating,” Casey mutters, but he steps aside with a sarcastic little hand gesture. “Look, are youherefor something? Do youwantsomething?”
“I want to know why you’re living in my father’s house!” Will says, taking advantage, finally, of the opportunity to cross his arms tightly over his chest. “Are you, like, squatting here?”
“What business would it be of yours if I was?”
“I mean, it is my house, technically,” Will says, though the sentence is uncomfortable in his mouth, seems to leave a grating, unpleasant residue behind, like wet sand.
Casey rolls his eyes. “Not for long, though, right? You’re going to sell out to Catherine Rose and that stupid company, like everyone else. Bill would be ashamed, you know—hesaw all this for what it was…when he was seeing clearly.”
“Gee,” Will says, blinking wide, furious eyes, “do you think so? Do you think that Bill would be ashamed? That he wouldn’t approve of me and who I’ve become? Gosh. That’s something I’dneverhave worked out for myself, Casey, so really, thanks so much for enlightening me!” Abruptly solving the mystery of the gaming system, and then, somewhat more surprisingly, the queer books on the shelves, his mouth hardens. “You might be surprised, actually, by how many directions Bill’s shame could run. If you’d known him the way I did, of course.”
Will expects this to make Casey angry; instead, his brow furrows. “What does that mean?”
“Oh, what does it matter what it means,” Will snarls, abruptly unwilling to delve even an inch further into that territory, never mind that he’s the one who brought it up. He starts walking backwards towards the door. “It’s not like you care what I have to say, right? Not like you bothered to try andcallme before my fatherdiedto, I don’t know, seek my opinion on his medical care? Inform me he was wasting away from the disease that’ll probably?—”
“For Christ’s sake,really?” Casey snaps, though Will notices his face twists guiltily before shuttering hard. “You wanna gothere?Don’t act like you’d have had a damn thing tosay, like you wanted to be involved! I remember how you were on that phone call?—”
“Yeah, maybe that wasn’t mybest moment!” Will nearly shrieks this, too irritated to modulate his volume, shrillness, or tone. “But fine, sure, whywouldn’tyou base your entire opinion of who I am as a person on my very first reaction to the death of the man who gave me this—ugh!”
The “ugh” is not entirely intentional; it turns out to be the noise Will releases when he trips on some unseen obstacle thatshouldn’t be thereand falls, hard, onto his ass. With a groan that’s half pain, half embarrassment, Will runs a hand over his face, leaving it gripping over his nose and mouth to keep himself from screaming in annoyance, as he looks down the length of his legs to see?—
“Why onearth,” Will asks, in a low, dangerous voice, “is there a rughiding atwo-inch holein my father’s hardwood floor?”
“Because it was a twelve-inch hole!” Casey nearly bellows this, towering over Will, who is still flat on the floor, not quite able to muster the energy yet to stand back up. “It was here when Igothere. Bill said there was an incident with abowlingball, I didn’t ask! But there wasn’t enough spare wood to fill it after I finished all the other projects, and you know what, okay, there were a lot of projects, and I’m one person, and usually people aren’twalking backwardsover that weird corner of the floor. I was going to get to it eventually!”
“A bowling ball?” Will says, half-bewildered, staring up into Casey’s twisting, angry face. With a hollow feeling in his gut, he thinks of the various accidents and incidents Old Bill had caused in the last years of his life, out of confusion, agitation, or both. Still: “My dad didn’t even bowl!”
Casey’s expression changes, morphing from one of irritation bordering on rage to one of sheepish realization. He must have noticed that he is, essentially, yelling at someone who has fallendown and not yet gotten up, and he shifts, clearly discomfited. “Look, sorry about the hole. I didn’t mean it to be a hazard, let me help you?—”
“No,” Will barks, suddenly full of energy again. He jumps up, bristling at the idea that he wants anything at all from Casey, let alone help. His body objects a little, but he ignores it. “Forget the stupid hole, it didn’t… It doesn’t… Look, I didn’t come here to do this with you! I just wanted…”
God, whathadWill wanted? Closure, maybe? A sense of peace? To confirm that both Bill and June were really, truly gone, and not playing a complicated prank on him, even though he knows, to his bones, that neither one of them could possibly have cared enough to bother with something like that? Maybe he’d wanted to see if any of it was still here: his teenage CD collection, his handful of classic comics, the books he’d loved enough to steal from the school library and claim had been lost in a farm accident.
“To bother me?” Casey suggests, his expression souring again. “You do seem to be pretty good at that.”
This, for whatever reason, annoys Will so much that he forgets how to think for a minute. It’s not the fact that he bothers Casey—that is an oddly satisfying piece of information—it’s the total lack oflogic. “I didn’t even know that youlivedhere, man! How could I possibly be coming to bother you?”
“I’m sure you’d find a way.”
“I could have just gone to themarket, if that’s what I’d wanted, why would Ievercomeherelooking foryou?”
