Grime Read Free Page B

little
turd.
    “You smell awful,” she says into my
shoulder.
    “That would be the cat shit.” I point around
the room. “Nice of you to join us after the hard part’s done. At
least you helped finish up the living room.”
    “We just got here a second ago. Didn’t do a
fucking thing. This was all Val.”
    “We?”
    “I brought reinforcements.”
    We go into the kitchen, where a tall guy with
a stained t-shirt is twisting the refrigerator away from the wall,
swiveling it back and forth, grunting.
    “Mitch, Ethan. Yadda yadda.”
    “Nice to meet you,” he grins with teeth the
color of nicotine. I can hear bottles clinking around inside the
fridge as he wiggles it across the floor.
    “Might be easier to do that if we empty it
first.”
    “Trust us,” Val’s voice drifts up from the
cupboards behind the counter, where she’s squatting and pulling out
pans. “You don’t want to open that door. It’s toxic in there.”
    “We decided it was better to just write the
whole fucking thing off and tip it all in the dump.” Gwen pushes
her hair back from her forehead and watches Ethan wrestle with the
fridge.
    “Well, let me go see if we have a handtruck
or something.” I head back through the living room where Jamie is
looking through one of the boxes on the floor. “Gwen’s here.”
    “Mitchell, did you see these?” She holds up
one of the file folders I’d pulled out of the desk.
    “I set them aside because they looked
important, but I didn’t really look at them. Why, what are
they?”
    “His release papers.”
    “He kept them?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Huh. Is that weird?”
    “I don’t know. Kind of. But maybe not. I
don’t know.” She puts the file folder back in the box. “I mean,
look around. He wasn’t exactly the type to throw anything out.
Should one of us keep these? Or give them to somebody?”
    “Who?”
    “Hell if I know. I’m just always paranoid
about throwing out official documents.”
    “Put the box aside, we can deal with it
later. Is there a dolly in the truck?”
    “Yeah, should be.”
    Even with the dolly it takes us a while to
get the fridge out to the trailer. Between it and the bags Val
filled while we were gone, it’s time for another trip to the dump
already. “Will they let us just toss a whole fridge?” Gwen asks.
“Isn’t there some Punky Brewster law or something?”
    “Punky Brewster law?”
    “Yeah, you know. There was some episode where
a kid got trapped in a fridge. I think they made it illegal to dump
them after that.”
    “Because of a kid’s TV show?”
    “You’re so stupid, baby.” Ethan rolls his
eyes at her.
    Gwen just bats her lashes at him. “But you
love how stupid I am, don’t you, baby?”
    I sort of don’t like the way he’s looking at
her, but I really don’t like the way she’s looking back.
    Val offers to go with Jamie this time. She’s
hardly said a word since we got back and I think she wants to get
away from Gwen for a while. They never did get along.
    With the promise of pizza upon their return,
Jamie and Val pull out of the driveway. “Wanna beer?” Ethan asks,
popping the trunk of his bizarre little red car and pulling out an
old Coleman cooler. It’s not even eleven-thirty, but what the hell.
I’ve been working hard. We all take one and sit on the curb,
watching the nothing go by.
    Gwen starts babbling. She tells me about
their apartment, and how it’s not too far away. She tells me about
their dog. She tells me about their friends. It’s always their,
never her. She’s in the middle of telling me about their landlord
when Ethan interrupts her.
    “You’re the homo brother, right?”
    “I’m the only brother.”
    “Yeah, but you’re a homo?”
    “Yeah.”
    He laughs wheezily. “Don’t worry, man. I
ain’t gonna hate crime you or anything. I’m just curious.”
    “Baby, stop it.”
    “Don’t tell me to stop it. I ain’t doing
nothing. We’re just talking. See, when you shut up for a minute,
sometimes