BooksBarbecue
Back At Dawn
Chapters (39)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
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  39. Copyright

We scooted it against the far wall between the two windows and directly below the gaping hole. The desk fit well there, and seeing it made me even more eager to move in. I wished like hell I didn’t have to wait six days, and for a moment I considered asking if we could forgo the six-day wait. But I didn’t, for fear of pressing my luck. We walked back up. Gene made a second drink. I hadn’t eaten yet, and on an empty stomach, I had a slight buzz from the first. We sat and made small talk until I finished. Gene made himself a third. I wondered how many he’d had already, and was even more curious as to how he kept so fit if this was how he passed the days.

But I liked him, and felt a certain lightheartedness by being in his company. There was something entirely agreeable about Gene, the way he didn’t seem to pull punches or pretend to be someone he wasn’t. Authentic was the word. He seemed like a man brought up on honesty, or maybe it had been ingrained in him from the military and he had kept with it postretirement, a man who told the truth even when the truth was something you didn’t want to hear. He radiated indifference to outside opinion: This is who I am, take it or leave it; it makes no difference to me. I’d always wished for immunity to those same external concerns, and thus having power over others who use judgment against you.

But there was more to Gene than that, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, at least not then, when meeting him for the first time. It’d be a while yet before I learned that Gene, too, in the quiet way in which he went about his life, was a man with something to hide.

six

1

BY MONDAY MORNING I was broke. After six days of work I had a good feel for when everyone else arrived. My normal start time was eight, and Cathy, my boss, didn’t arrive until a quarter to nine. By arriving at seven thirty, not only did I have the luxury of no supervision for an hour and fifteen minutes, but I’d also receive a half hour of overtime every day by leaving at the normal time of four thirty, thus beefing up my paycheck a bit. But that wouldn’t help my current financial plight, or the more pressing matter of what I’d eat for lunch.