“The karate kid,” he says.
21
Rooftop Revelations
BLIMEY, THIS KID’S full of surprises.
“The what?” Only it’s more like, the-hell-you-say???
He looks at me with a blank expression, tilts his head like a dog.
“Walt?”
Nothing. At all. And then—everything at once. He tosses the empty twenty-ouncer into a trash can, throws his suitcase over the checkout counter, hops over after it, and disappears around a back corner.
Like I said . . . surprises.
I throw my bag over the counter and jump it myself. These last couple days have been tough on my poor leg. At this rate, that cut will probably heal into some horrible disfigurement. Just add it to my list of medical oddities.
Around the corner, I spot Walt’s green Chucks on the top rung of a ladder, now disappearing through a trapdoor in the ceiling.
“Wait up, Walt!”
Caleb has stopped banging on the front door, which is unsettling, to say the least. I picture him crawling like a snake through the ductwork—hissing, spitting, eagerly calculating an alternate point of entry.
After scurrying up the ladder, I emerge through the same trapdoor and climb out onto the roof. It’s still morning, but the sun is out in full force, beating down on the gravel and cement. Broad pipes, ventilation fans, and all manner of rusty eyesores sprout up like weeds every five feet or so. Planted right in the middle of the gas station roof is a massive tank; it’s circular, like an aboveground pool, only taller. Standing at least eight feet high, it takes up more than half the surface area of the roof.
“Where is he, Al?”
I follow Walt’s voice around the side of the tank and find him standing next to a 340-pound whale of a man in aviator sunglasses. The guy is lounging shirtless in a folding chair, sipping an umbrella drink. He’s frightfully pale, a condition magnified by dark oil stains smeared across his face. Layer after folding layer, his stomach hangs down over his swimming trunks.
“Walt”—I point toward the fat guy—“you see him, too, right?”
The man’s blubber shakes as he laughs. He sips his daiquiri through a crazy straw, looks from Walt to me. “Nah, I’m just a figment of your imagination, kid. What, you were expecting a hookah-smoking caterpillar?”
Walt, ignoring us both, bounces up and down on the heels of his feet. “Where is he, Al, where is he?”
I cross the roof, joining them in the partial shade of a fake palm tree, doing my best not to throw up on the Pale Whale’s third circle of blubber. “Walt, we gotta get off this roof, man. We’re sitting ducks up here.”
“Who the hell are you?” asks the Pale Whale.
An image, from the most vivid quarters of my imagination: a car changing this man’s oil. “Mim,” I say. All I can muster.
“Ma’am?!” he blurts. “What kind of name is that?”
I find it hard to believe this man could criticize anybody’s anything. “You find the bottom of that daiquiri yet? What is it, eight a.m.?” I turn to Walt. “Listen. We don’t have time for this. Caleb’s insane. It’s only a matter of time—”
“That’s just bad manners, see.”
Spinning, I see Caleb round the circular tank, holding a sizeable hunting knife. A trickle of blood drips from his hands onto the gravel roof. He coughs, then pulls a cigarette from his back pocket and lights it. “Sorry, Al—had to bust a double-paned window to get in.” Inhaling, his eyes dart around. “Where’s your boyfriend?”
Gas station plus boyfriend.
“Karate class in Union,” says the Pale Whale, smacking his lips around the straw.
An odd smile spreads across Caleb’s face. He steps closer, the sharp end of the hunting blade shimmering in the light of the morning sun. “Like a fuckin’ six-year-old,” he mumbles.
Al pinches one nostril, blows snot out the other—just like a whale’s blowhole. Sliding his meaty hands behind his head, he sighs, and for a moment it’s quiet, as if none of us are entirely sure whose turn it is to talk. Then, with the subtlety befitting a man of his stature, Albert breaks the silence. “You’re a freak show, you know that, Caleb?” The folding chair squeaks under his weight. “Seriously, you should sell tickets. People would come from miles around to see you talk to yourself. Speaking of which—when you do that, is it a natural, everyday sort of thing, like putting on socks?”
Caleb’s eyes twitch, but he doesn’t answer.
“I shouldn’t make fun,” continues Albert, rubbing his aviators on the bottom of his shorts. “I suppose that’s a brand of bat-shit crazy you just can’t help.”
Caleb stands frozen, blood still dripping from the cut on his hand.
Al raises his daiquiri to his lips. A stubborn slice of strawberry gets stuck in the straw. He sucks harder, squeezing it like Augustus through the glass tube in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He swallows it down, tilts his head at Caleb. Like an old-fashioned pistol duel, it’s not about who draws first, but who draws quickest.
“Get the hell off my roof,” says Albert, each of his stomachs rising, falling.
Caleb pulls back his shoulders, and once again, I notice his red hoodie. The same as my own. I picture my Abilitol in the bottom of my bag, shrouded in the darkness of its canvas tomb, screaming a promise of normalcy.
“I’m not crazy,” whispers Caleb, twirling the knife in his hands.