Naive Charles Royce (great novels .txt) 📖

begins the journey back to his son. Even with an uphill slope, he muscles his way through the two-mile digression until he turns from Avenue D onto 10th Street, to the end of the roundabout, the center of which is obscured from the streetlight by the foliage surrounding it. He hops out of the wheelchair, kicks it, then throws it to the very back of its usual resting place, next to his rickety old bicycle among a series of useless garbage cans devoured by hungry bushes.

“Shit,” he says, running to the back of his building, which all but disappears among a forest of similar, larger ones.

“Shit shit fuck.”

He opens the heavy metal door at the back entrance of the housing unit and bolts up the four flights of stairs that lead up to his small solemn apartment in Alphabet City. He unlocks the deadbolt and enters. Using only the light from the streetlamp outside trickling in through the tiny window in his living room to guide him, he tiptoes down the narrow hallway to the bedroom door. He opens it. A vertical shaft of light makes its way across the room until it bathes his child in an ambient glow, like a sliver of hope reminding him of the why of it all. The boy awakens and pushes himself up. He says nothing, lies back down, and turns away from the light.

Ghost walks to the bed, pulls back the covers, lies down and wraps himself around his son, one arm tucked underneath the boy’s pillow, the other around his waist. He pulls him close.

“It’s almost over, mon cœur. Daddy almost has enough to take us home.”

He rubs the back of his son’s head. The child lets out an audible sigh.

“Shhh. Sleep.”

C h a p t e r   2 8

“How did you sleep?” Haylee asks, bringing a cup of coffee into the bedroom. Darkness still fills the room, as the sun has just begun to illuminate the Brooklyn sky. Shawn, face down, pulls the Egyptian cotton sheets with his hands and stretches across the king-size bed.

“What time is it?” Shawn grunts. “Better yet, did you remember where you saw that ghost emblem?”

“Geez, baby, you are obsessed.” Haylee moves toward her husband with the coffee, which is her signal for him to sit up and start the day. “No, I haven’t remembered where I saw it, and yes it’s time to get your lazy ass outta bed.”

“It’s quite the logo. Can’t make sense of it, but it’s key to acquitting Micah.” He sits up, takes the coffee and sips it like it’s nectar. “I just know it. Oh, that’s good, thank you, honey.”

“That’s why I can recall seeing it, but I can’t remember where.” Haylee scooches herself halfway into bed, almost causing Shawn to spill his coffee.

She stares out the window that looks onto the tree-lined street. Shawn notices.

“Honey, it’s okay, we’ll find this guy some other way.” Shawn places his hand over hers.

“No, no, it’s not that. I was just dreading seeing this client of mine today. It’s always so heavy.”

“That’s because my baby feels everything.” He pulls his hand away from hers, and in a loving jab he grabs a pillow as if he’s about to hit her with it.

“I hope you spill that coffee,” she says as she climbs off the bed and heads toward the bathroom.

“Baby.” Shawn puts his pillow down and stands up. “What’s up with this client of yours that has you so poopy?”

“Oh God, honey. It’s awful. He’s been spiritually abused in the worst way.”

“Spiritually abused? Did you make that up?” Shawn places his coffee on the nightstand.

“No, it’s very real, and it’s pretty common. The church can do a number on you, trust me. I have three clients who moved to the city because, I don’t know, they wanted to escape?” She plugs in her flat iron to warm it up.

Shawn moves toward the doorway, his body backlit by the morning sun.

“Escape what, specifically?” He knows she won’t answer.

“Nice try,” she says, opening the floor-to-ceiling glass door of their seamless shower and pressing the electronic control knob to start the water. She speaks louder so Shawn can hear her over the ceiling showerhead pelting rain drops onto the basalt floor. “The confidentiality of my patient-client relationship prohibits me from …”

Her voice fades into the noise of the shower, as Shawn mouths a blah, blah blah at his own reflection in the mirrored medicine cabinet. He places his hands on either side of the sink and pushes his upper body toward the mirror. He nods in approval at his scruff and decides to keep it for the day. He opens the medicine cabinet, pulls out his dental floss, and begins twirling it around his finger.

“But what I can tell you,” Haylee continues, her voice louder to make her point, “is that these abused religious people move to the city to escape the church, but they can’t seem to escape their core beliefs. Like they’re in there. Way in there. Deep. So it’s a constant internal battle. I mean, we didn’t grow up that way, you and me, so we don’t have a frame of reference, nor do I want one. But I hear story after story like this all the time. It’s rampant. The weirdest thing, don’t you think?”

Shawn closes the cabinet, his reflection coming back into view. He looks at himself and squints as if a light had just turned on above him.

✽✽✽

((Honk honk.))

Across the East River, the loud noise causes the young man to stumble into the traffic going the other way. With no memory of how he got there, he now finds himself in the middle of 42nd Street and 8th Avenue, in early morning rush-hour traffic.

((Honk honk honk.))

The cars swerve and brake to miss the man, who is desperate to find a resting place for his flailing limbs. His skin is a pale blue, and his tattered skinny-jeans are the only thing that remain on his cold