Left on St. Truth-Be-Well Read Free

corner of his upper lip. “Anything to eat with that?”
    Carson was shaking his head when Florida nodded.
    “Of course there is. We’re gonna fix you up. One breakfast taco platter—sausage, taters, bacon, eggs, fish—you’ll see. You can eat it in a hurry, since you seem to be a little rushed.”
    The guy spoke s-l-o-w-l-y, each word stretched out, laved, mauled, and sensitized by the indolent drawl of his tongue.
    Carson realized he was twitching his thumb about ten beats per word, and he flushed. “Sorry. Man, coffee. That is one serious drug, you know?”
    Florida nodded. “I’ll have some out for you. You look like crap. You didn’t sleep over there, did you?”
    Involuntarily, Carson shuddered. “No,” he said, his eyes wide and his voice haunted. “But it was a near thing.”
    Florida laughed some more and then, unbelievably, reached across the counter and patted Carson’s cheek. “Tell you what, city boy, you go pick a table. I’ll bring you some real food, and you can tell me all about it.”
    “But—”
    “You don’t like the food, you don’t have to pay.”
    It was like he was one of those bobblehead dolls. He nodded, mouth open, and Florida winked. Carson moved, his autopilot taking him outside to one of three picnic tables covered in red-and-white-checked tablecloths, and he sank down on it gratefully and rested his chin in his hands.
    He must have shut his eyes, because when he opened them, he was staring at a well-endowed crotch in a pair of faded 501 cutoffs, and he flailed backward, almost falling over.
    That syrupy laugh hauled him forward by his dignity, and a thirty-two-ounce Styrofoam cup plunked down in front of him, with cream and sugar packets stacked on top of the lid.
    “So, you didn’t spend the night across the street?”
    Carson met Florida’s bright blue eyes.
    “No,” he said, thinking he was going to have to relive the horror soon anyway. “I checked in, but I did not stay.”
    Florida laughed, a low, dirty laugh that did something melty to Carson’s insides, and Carson hurriedly started to fix his coffee. He did not have this reaction to men, oh no he did not. Women made him melty, men made him humpty. It was usually that simple. But no, this guy’s laugh… it made him melty. It was the brown skin on his shoulders that made Carson humpty, but now was not the time.
    “Well, that sounds like a story. Walk me through it.”
    Carson took a deep breath and opened a package of artificial sweetener, then took the lid off his coffee to dump it in. “Well, for starters, it was open,” he said. “I mean, I thought it was an accident or something, but I went down to the car to get my stuff, and when I came back, I realized the fucking door wouldn’t lock. And it was twelve o’clock at night, right? And I thought, you know, I used to live by Cabrini-Green before it got demolished, I could deal with a door that didn’t lock—no worries. So I threw my stuff on the bed and turned on the light and…”
    “Mold,” Florida said knowingly. He tore open another packet of sweetener and dumped it in, then followed that up with two creamers. Carson glared in annoyance. It had taken him a year to give up creamer, in a painstaking effort to carve his abs into a six-pack. It hadn’t quite worked, but he’d kept the creamer out of his diet just on general principle. Florida ignored his glare, stirred the coffee, put the lid on and peeled back the little plastic flap, and handed it to him. “Tastes better with cream,” he said, and his tone brooked no argument.
    Carson needed that coffee. He sank into it with a blissful sigh. God, it would have been good even without the creamer.
    “Yeah,” he breathed after a minute. “There was mold. Black mold on the sink, white mold on the carpet… but, you know… my first apartment was pretty shitty. I thought I could deal with the mold.” He took another blissful swallow of coffee. “And the termite wood dust in the