He came out of the
shower pink and steaming and scrubbed, put on the sweats that Adam found
for him in an old gym bag, ate his sandwiches, and climbed into Adam's
bed with his brothers. When he saw them again next, they were
reassembled and downcast, though they ate the instant oatmeal with
raisins and cream that he set out for them with gusto.
"I think a bus ticket home is about forty bucks, right?" Alan said as he
poured himself a coffee.
They looked up at him. Ed's eyes were grateful, his lips clamped shut.
"And you'll need some food on the road, another fifty or sixty bucks,
okay?"
Ed nodded and Adam set down a brown hundred-dollar bill, then put a
purple ten on top of it. "For the taxi to the Greyhound station," he
added.
#
They finished their oatmeal in silence, while Adam puttered around the
apartment, stripping the cheese-smelling sheets and oily pillowcases off
his bed, rinsing the hairs off the soap, cleaning the toilet. Erasing
the signs of their stay.
"Well," he said at length. "I should get going to the shop."
"Yeah," Ed said, in George's voice, and it cracked before he could close
his lips again.
"Right," Adam said. "Well."
They patted their mouth and ran stubby fingers through their lank hair,
already thinning though they were still in their teens. They stood and
cracked their knuckles against the table.
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