Chapter 65

Inside he felt as hollow as that can, as if everything in him had spilled out or evaporated in the thick summer heat baking through the garage’s corrugated steel walls. He lay on his stomach, arms folded beneath him, the sheets that had covered him now kicked to the end of the mattress as the afternoon wore on. His head was turned towards Ange but he only looked at his friend in quick glances whenever the motion of his hand caught Stacy’s attention. Otherwise he stared at a stain near Ange’s hip, a dingy patch of something or other slightly grayer than the rest of the faded bed sheet, and tried not to think.

When Ange took another puff on his cig and asked, “What’s on your mind?” it was with complete honesty that Stacy answered, “Nothing.”

“At all?” Ange sounded incredulous, but that might have been the warm smoke curling through his throat while he spoke.

Stacy shrugged. “More or less.”