Dark Advent Read Free Page B

for the first round of beers, then grinned as Kelly eyed the waitress’s backside. A wistful little smile played over the older man’s lips.
    “Now that makes me long for younger days,” Kelly said. “Right after I just aced puberty.”
    “You’d go through acne again?”
    Kelly rubbed his shiny scalp, bordered by little more than a monk’s fringe. “There are worse things.”
    Grabbing a few after work had been Kelly’s idea, and they’d driven to a dive called The Night Life Lounge. The “Lounge” label didn’t add much class. It was a comfortable bar where you came to get plowed without any pretensions. The decor was tacky, the jukebox alternately thumped hard rock and country and western, and the clientele was a melting pot of redneck blue collars, folks who looked like drifters that had forgotten to move on, and underage kids with fake IDs. There were nicer bars around, but neither of them felt up to one.
    “Lemme ask you something personal,” Kelly said. “Okay?”
    Jason looked up from his frosted glass. “Fire away.”
    “You haven’t been a very happy camper this summer, have you?”
    “It’s had its moments.”
    “But in general, I mean.” His tone was gentle, not probing.
    “In general? No. Not really.”
    Kelly nodded. “I didn’t think so. After as long as I’ve known you, I can read you pretty good. And Jay…you don’t have that same old spark in you anymore.”
    Jason shrugged, watched tiny bubbles shoot up through his beer.
    “Anything you want to talk about?”
    Jason took a drink, swirled his glass, stared at the plastic Peterbilt truck on the wall that was somebody’s idea of decoration.
    “I’m not sure how to put it myself. It’s like…like I feel let down by this summer. Cheated out of something. I just keep plodding along with the same old crap, no changes. Like I’m on some kind of treadmill.” His voice trailed away and he finally concluded with a helpless shrug, as if in surrender.
    Kelly nodded slowly, deliberately, mulled it over. Took a couple thoughtful swallows of beer. Finally looked back up. “Listen, and bear in mind I’m no therapist, but did you ever think that maybe you were expecting too much from this summer? Something it couldn’t deliver?”
    “Like what?”
    “Oh, say…the past.”
    Jason pondered this a moment or two. “Bull’s-eye.”
    Kelly flashed a look of false modesty. “It’s plain enough. With the exception of last summer, you’ve had it pretty good around here. I wouldn’t expect you to give it up and turn loose that easily. But there comes a time when you just plain don’t have a choice anymore.” He emphasized his last few words by pecking at the scarred tabletop with blunt, stubby fingers. “And if you still refuse to give it up, you could end up like them.” He rolled his eyes to his left, toward the guys a couple tables over. “Nobody wants to end up like them.”
    Jason glanced sideways. A half-dozen of them sat crowded around the round table, all looking like variations from the same basic mold: dirty jeans and work shirts, hobnail boots, several days’ growth of beard, oily hair. And if you looked close enough, eyes of quiet desperation. No…he didn’t want to end up like them.
    Kelly killed his beer, motioned Jason to do the same, waved for another round, paid for it. “So your summer’s turned into a real shitter. Look upon it as a learning experience. You can’t live in the past.”
    “Oooh,” Jason said. “You make that up all by yourself?”
    Kelly made an obscene gesture, then grinned and stretched and leaned back in his chair. “Hey. Remember when you started taking all those business courses up there, and how I used to accuse you of plotting to kill me and take over the store?”
    “You’ll recall I never denied it.”
    “I know! I know! And was I ever sorry I brought it up! I never will forget the night you came creeping in when I was all alone, doing the books. You had a shotgun!” Kelly