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I stab at the lo mein with my plastic fork. “Shut up. It is different.”
“Please at least tell me that you’re going to get paid,” he says when he manages to catch a breath.
“They said they’d get the charges against Mom dropped.”
“Good.” He nods. “Any cold hard cash going along with that?”
I hesitate, then have to admit, “I didn’t ask.”
“You have a skill. You can do something no one else can,” Barron says. “Seriously. You know what’s good about that? It’s valuable. As in you can trade it for goods or services. Or money. Remember when I said it was wasted on you? I was so right.”
I groan and shove rice into my mouth so that I don’t decide to dump the whole carton over his head.
* * *
After we finish eating Barron calls Grandad. He tells a long and complicated series of lies about the questions the federal agents asked and how we weaseled out of answering all of them through our inherent charm and wit. Grandad cackles down the line.
When I get on, Grandad asks me if any of what Barron said was true.
“Some,” I tell him.
He stays quiet.
“Okay, very little,” I finally admit. “But everything’s okay.”
“Remember what I said. This is your mother’s trouble, not yours. Not Barron’s, either. Both of you need to stay out of it.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Is Sam still there? Can I talk to him?”
Grandad gives the phone to Sam, who still sounds groggy but not all that upset to be abandoned for most of the day and the rest of tonight.
“It’s okay,” he informs me. “Your grandfather is teaching me how to play poker.”
If I know Grandad, that means what he’ll really be teaching Sam is how to cheat.
* * *
Barron offers to let me take his bed, saying that he can sleep anywhere. I’m not sure if he’s suggesting that there are beds all over town for him to slip into or just that he’s not picky about sleeping on furniture, but I take the sofa so I don’t have to find out.
He digs up a couple of blankets that used to be at the old house. They smell like home, a somewhat dusty stale odor that’s not entirely pleasant but that I inhale greedily. It reminds me of being a kid, of being safe, of sleeping late on Sundays and watching cartoons in my pajamas.
I forget where I am and try to straighten out my legs. My feet kick against the armrest, and I remember that I’m not a kid anymore.
I’m too tall to be comfortable, but I curl on the couch and manage to doze off eventually.
I wake up to the sounds of Barron making coffee. He pushes a box of cereal at me. He’s terrible in the morning. It takes him three cups of coffee before he can reliably put together a whole sentence.
I take a shower. When I come out, he’s wearing a dark gray pin-striped suit with a white T-shirt under it. His wavy hair is gelled back, and he’s got a new gold watch on his wrist. I wonder if that was in the FBI warehouse too. Either way, he looks like he made an impressive effort for a Sunday afternoon.
“What are you all dressed up for?”
Barron grins. “Clothes make the man. You want to borrow something clean?”
“I’ll muck through,” I tell him, pulling on my T-shirt from yesterday. “You look like a mobster, you know.”
“That’s another thing I’m good at that most trainees aren’t,” he says, getting out a comb and running it through his hair one last time. “No one would ever guess that I’m a federal agent.”
By the time we’re ready to leave, it’s early afternoon. We get into Barron’s ridiculous Ferrari and head upstate, toward Paterson.
