Breaking the Rules (8 page)

But goddamnit, he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life pining for someone he couldn’t have.

So when Cynthia reached out to touch him again, when she said, “Hey, have you had dinner? Because I’ve got some chicken I was going to grill, back at my place …” When she gathered up her purse and jacket and gestured for him to follow her out the door …

Izzy didn’t say no.

The house was quiet when Ben came home from school, and he made a point to close the screen door behind him as quietly as possible, since that was one of his stepfather Greg’s pet peeves.

Close that door like a human being, not like the wild animal that you are, boy …

Mondays sucked more than usual because Greg wouldn’t drink on Sundays, and although he was a mean drunk, he was still plenty mean when he was sober, and his going without made him crazy, too.

And his Sunday self-prohibition extended until Monday at 5 p.m., at which point a stiff drink or five were finally allowed, according to the Rules of Greg’s World. Greg compensated for Monday’s hellishness by sleeping away as much of the day as possible.

Ben usually stayed away most of Monday, because waking Greg up would get him hit or spat on, which was disgusting.

It was hard to know which was worse—Monday afternoon or
Monday night, as crazy slid into a drunken mean that was wide awake into the wee hours of the morning.

He’d only come home to pick up the clothes he’d found last night, while rummaging through a box of Sandy’s things that had been shoved into the attic. There were a whole pile of shirts from her pre-childbearing years that she’d never wear again, and Ben had tossed them into the washing machine so they wouldn’t smell musty when he gave them to the runaway who hung out at the mall.

He moved noiselessly down the hall to his bedroom and grabbed the bag that he’d put them in, then swung into the kitchen to scrounge for a snack or at least a small glass of OJ to keep his blood sugar level and …

The letter was open and on the counter, addressed to Mrs. Ivette Fortune. It was from the Department of the U.S. Navy, and—holy shit—they were writing to inform her of their failed attempts to contact her via phone and e-mail regarding her son, Petty Officer First Class Daniel Gillman, who had—God, no!—recently been seriously injured.

But the letter didn’t provide details and—fuck—it was dated April 20. There was a phone number to call for more information, along with a request for his mother to update her contact information, should they need to get in touch with her regarding Dan’s condition.

Like, if he died.

It was May fourth, and Dan could well already be dead, the letter containing
that
information already wending its way to Vegas. The room spun and Ben’s stomach heaved and he lunged for the fridge, yanking the door open. He grabbed the container of orange juice and drank straight from the bottle.

And got slapped on the back of his head, which sent the orange juice container flying and made him smash his nose into the closed freezer door.

“What’d I tell you about acting like a human being in my house?” said the man who’d just hit him so hard his teeth had rattled. “You drink from a glass, boy. God knows what kind of diseases a freak like you brings home!”

Yeah, he’d woken up Greg.

There was a smear of blood from his nose on the freezer, but that was the least of his problems as he turned and picked the letter up off the counter.

“You clean up this mess,” his stepfather was saying, but Ben interrupted him—something he rarely did even though he’d long since given up on trying not to rock the boat.

“Is Danny all right?” Ben demanded. “What did they say when you called?”

“Is that letter addressed to you?” Greg tried to swat the letter out of Ben’s hand, but Ben pulled back. “I said, clean up—”

“It’s not addressed to you, either,” Ben countered. “But whatever. I just want to know what they said when you called …” But as the words left his lips, he realized his mistake. He’d assumed that Greg had been as anxious and worried as he was. “You didn’t call.” He sidestepped Greg’s pathetic attempt to get back that letter even as he moved toward the dirty white phone that hung on the kitchen wall. He picked it up and … Of course. There was no dial tone. What a surprise.

“Phone’s out again,” Greg said, as if that were the phone company’s fault, not his. “Now you give that to me and clean up this—”

Ben hung up the handset with a crash as he stepped out of Greg’s reach again. “Phone’s
out
, because you didn’t pay the fucking bill with the money my brother sent you. Did you pay the rent? At least you paid the rent, right?”

“Don’t you dare use that language in my house!”

“It’s
my
house,” Ben shouted. “The only reason the rent gets paid is because Danny sends it every month—for
me.
”

“Don’t you raise your voice to me, boy!”

“He could be dead—right now!” Ben got even louder as he moved to the other side of the kitchen table. “And I know you don’t give a
shit
about what that means to my mother and me. But here’s a newsflash for you. If Danny’s dead, he can’t send home that money. Have you thought about that?”

And in a newsflash of his own, he realized that Greg
had
thought
about that. But he’d thought about it in terms of the insurance payout Ben’s mother would receive if Danny died. He didn’t say as much now, but his answer was all over his ugly face. Besides, he’d joked about it in the past, plenty of times.
Maybe the kid’ll step on a landmine and we’ll have the money to start up that restaurant you’ve been talking about for years … Heh heh …

“You probably spent the afternoon praying that he dies,” Ben whispered.

“It would serve you right if he did die,” Greg spat as he hit Ben with a slap that stung his face and spun him into the wall. “It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if God punished you for your sins by—”

Ben had had enough. He lowered his head and threw himself forward with a roar, and he hit Greg in the chest with his full weight, which wasn’t much, but was more than he’d ever done before.

Normally, he’d just cower and take his beatings.

But now they both went down onto the floor, right into the puddle of orange juice, with Greg kicking and scratching and slapping as Ben tried to keep that letter with its phone number out of the wet, even as he desperately tried to get away.

“I’ll beat you, boy,” Greg was screaming, showering him with spittle as he grabbed hold of Ben’s hair and pulled. “I will beat you within an inch of your—”

Ben elbowed him in the stomach, doing some kicking himself to get free.

His knee must’ve collided with Greg’s balls, because his stepfather screamed in pain and then started retching, finally letting go of Ben, who scrambled to his feet. He jammed the letter into his pocket as Greg curled, rocking, into a ball. If he’d known it would be that easy to win, he would’ve fought back years ago.

He had time to open the refrigerator and sweep his entire supply of insulin into a plastic shopping bag. He took the OJ carton, too, because he was still feeling pretty majorly out of body. He picked up the bag of clothes for the girl at the mall—there wasn’t time for him to pack anything for himself, which was a shame. And then, as Greg was
starting to make more intelligible sounds, Ben went out the front door, letting the screen screech and slap behind him, in one final
fuck you
.

This was a bad idea.

Cynthia the nurse lived in a small apartment without a roommate, which meant the collections of teddy bears and Hummel figures and look—a Hummel figure teddy bear—were all hers.

What was she, ten? No, apparently not. There was a multitude of birthday cards artfully arranged on an end table that sat between a matching sofa and chair—both perkily, neatly floral-printed.
Big Three-Oh
one of the cards said in a cartoon bubble coming out of the mouth of a … wait for it … teddy bear. Yeah. The others were more Hallmarkie.
Love and affection for my darling daughter on this special day
kind of stuff.

There were a dozen of them. Two from her mother, one from her father and stepmother, the rest from aunts and uncles and cousins and friends. It was pretty impressive—the size of her support team. Impressive and nice. A lot of military personnel, himself included, didn’t get even one card on their birthdays.

The apartment itself was impeccably clean and neat, and looked like something out of a Pottery Barn catalog. Everything had a place where it belonged, and the artwork on the walls was in perfect harmony with the beflowered furniture.

Of course, maybe she’d rented the place furnished and none of this was hers.

But the tidiness was all Cynthia—no doubt about that. There was no clutter anywhere. Not even a small pile of mail or a book out and open, spine up, on the coffee table. No sneakers kicked off while she watched TV and … Come to think of it, there was no TV.

She’d gotten a phone call right after unlocking the door and letting
him in and he’d given her privacy by hanging here in her little living room while she bustled into the kitchen to start cooking dinner.

Izzy now wandered over to a small collection of DVDs and CDs that sat on a shelf beneath the bears. Her music was limited to classical. She had a lot of Wagner operas, which was alarming since it was just about
the
only form of music that would make him bleed from the ears while going blind. But the Wagner wasn’t half as alarming as her DVDs. She had only seven—probably to watch on her laptop—and all were foreign art films, with a heavy emphasis on dramas about suicidal Scandinavians, shot in the dark of a northern winter.

“Why don’t you … um. Do you want to take a shower?” She poked her head out of the kitchen, finally off the phone.

“Oh. Thanks,” Izzy said as he moved toward the kitchen, where something was smelling very, very good as it cooked. “But no, I’m good.” He stopped short. “At least I think I’m good.” He did a quick pit check, but then realized … “Unless it’s a thing, like you need me to shower …?”

“No,” she said far too quickly, which made him know it
was
a thing—she definitely liked men to shower before she had sex with them.

But that was okay. Clean was fine. It was good.

“How about we both take one after dinner?” he said, and her relief was nearly palpable.

The kitchen was all a maddeningly cheery yellow—and again, everything freaking matched. The only thing missing was a sign saying
ZANELLA, LEAVE NOW, BEFORE YOU MAKE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE
.

“That sounds … nice,” she said.

Nice? Was she kidding? But no, she was just nervous. That made two of them.

“So,” he said, searching for something to say. “You collect bears.”

She smiled. “It’s silly, I know, but my cousin’s kids started sending them to me and … They get me one wherever they go.”

“That’s nice,” he said, and God, now he was doing it, too. But it
was true. It
was
nice. This apartment was nice. Cynthia was nice. Her family was nice. Nice, nice, nice.

“Have you lived here long?” he tried.

“Four—no, five years now,” she told him as she handed him a glass of wine that she’d poured for him. She
was
lovely, with a body that filled the T-shirt and jeans she had on in a very satisfying way. “I was here for two years before I finally got my things out of storage. Thank God. That was hard, living out of suitcases …”

“For me a suitcase is a luxury,” Izzy said, taking a sip. Damn, it was so sweet he nearly gagged.

“That’s terrible,” she said. “You must get so tired of it.”

“No, actually,” he said. “It’s the way I … like to roll.” Seriously? Had he just said
like to roll
?

But she was giving him hero-worship eyes again, and he knew that the shower-after-dinner thing was optional. She was ready and willing to do him right here on the kitchen table.

Of course the wine she was chugging was probably adding to her super-friendly
do me even if you’re grubby
factor. She poured herself another healthy glass and drank about half of it in one fortifying gulp as she turned to stir what looked like a mix of onions and mushrooms that were sautéing in a pan on the stove. The chicken was cooking on one of those little George Foreman grills, plugged into a power adapter to make it compatible with the German electrical system.

Lettuce and other vegetables for a salad were out on the counter and Izzy said, “Oh, good, let me help,” mostly in an effort to put down that god-awful glass of wine.

“Oh, thanks,” she said. “The knives are—”

“I got it,” he said, already finding one—it had a yellow handle, natch—and reaching to take a cutting board from where it hung on the wall. He started to cut up a pepper.

“Whenever the teddy bear count gets to ten,” she told him, “I take them over to the soldiers at the hospital. The kids send me about one a week, so it doesn’t take long.”

“That’s nice,” Izzy said, mentally wincing at his word choice as
they fell back into an awkward silence. It was then that he noticed a framed photo of what had to be Cynthia, pre-kindergarten, with her parents. “Are you an only child?”

“I am now,” she said. “My little brother died in Iraq, back in 2003.”

Ah, crap. “I’m sorry,” Izzy said.

“It’s been … hard,” she said. Understatement of the century.

And Izzy put down the knife, because come on. There was no way he was going to have sex with this woman and walk away. Which meant there was no way he was going to have sex with her, period, the end, because walking away was a given.

“So,” he said as he turned to face her, leaning back against the counter. “I saw the birthday cards and, um, I’m just kind of thinking, you know, turning thirty can be kind of hard for some people. Traumatic, even. Some people go a little crazy. Do things they normally wouldn’t do …”