Betwixt Read Free Page A

minutes ago. What are you doing?”
    Nicholas Saint-Michael did not look up. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to. He liked Jacob. Jacob was, in fact, the best boss
     Nix had ever had since he first started hauling spruce chips forFrank Shadwell back in Sitka when he was nine years old. That was another life, though, and in this one, he knew better.
    Jacob repeated himself. “What the hell are you doing?”
    Nix kept his eyes down. He couldn’t look at Jacob. Physically couldn’t. The man had a light around him so bright Nix had to
     keep his eyes closed or his back turned whenever his boss was in the room.
    “What is going on?”
    He set the plate down and let go of the handle of the spray nozzle.
    “Man, I can’t do this job anymore.”
    Even with his eyes half closed, Nix could see the light, blinding and painful as the sun, around the saggy sides of Jacob’s
     faded black jeans.
    “What did you say?”
    “I said I can’t do this anymore.” He brought his hand to his brow to wipe back a slash of black hair, staring at the water
     and the soap swirling. Jacob’s reflection shimmered in the sink, but the light wasn’t in the reflection — they didn’t show
     up there, he’d noticed — and so he spoke to Jacob’s watery mirror image.
    “Man, I just wash the dishes.”
    “Yeah?”
    Nix felt the man come closer, reach over the pool of water, pull the nozzle out of his hand. He let him, though he shrunk
     back as Jacob’s hand approached.
    “No, Nix. You act like a dishwasher. You assume the pose of a dishwasher. But a dishwasher you are not. A dishwasher would
     wash the fucking dishes.”
    “Right.” Nix’s eyes stayed on the water. He wanted to meet Jacob’s gaze, show him that he could do it, keep the job, make
     the owner happy. The dude had tried. Nix knew he had tried.
    He forced himself to look up.
    “I’m just messing you up.”
    “Messing
me
up?”
    The man’s face had hardened into a mask of disappointment. The wide mouth a ruddy dash; his dark, close-set eyes flat under
     frizzed black-brown eyebrows. And the fire all around him even brighter now, incinerating.
    The closer they got the more they burned.
    Nix looked away. “I can’t stay.”
    “What did you say?”
    “I said I can’t stay. I’m bad for you.”
    Again Jacob moved closer and Nix watched a blazing hand approach his shoulder. He jerked away.
    “What’s going on?”
    How could he explain something he himself could not understand?
    “Jacob, man. I’m no good.”
    “Look, if you’re hooked on dust, kid, we can work something —”
    “Naw, naw. That’s not it.”
    These cloaks of light, Nix had seen them before. Lately they had gotten bolder, more violent. That girl up at the squat who
     got her throat slit, dumped somewhere out toward Bend. The man Nix saw on the Burnside bus, killed in a holdup two weeks later.
     All those people on the road down from Alaska.
    It had happened to Frank Shadwell before Nix’s mother, Bettina, had done what she’d done. If Nix had stayed in Sitka, it would
     have happened to Bettina, too. Now the light devoured Jacob, and Nix couldn’t look at him because he was afraid it was his
     own mind causing the fire.
    He shook his head and spoke to the floor.
    “I gotta go.”
    Jacob sighed. “Go take a break and smoke a cigarette or something and calm down. I’ll cover for you while you’re gone.” He
     started to move behind the sink to take Nix’s place.
    “Man. I told you. I’m no good.”
    “Nix, take a friggin’ break and come back and do your job.”
    “No.” He let go of the nozzle. The fire diminished. It calmed him, made him more certain that he needed to leave. “I’m just
     fucking you up.”
    “What?” Jacob asked. “What are you talking about?”
    Nix started to walk out of the kitchen, but stopped. He couldn’t just leave. He owed it to the man. When he finally looked
     up, Jacob looked confused and sad.
    “You tried, man. You tried.”
    “I don’t know