Read Online All the Old Haunts by Chris Lynch - Free Book Online

as he leads her in. Once inside he rebolts the door, then secures the chain. He turns to her, smiling broadly.
    She is smiling too, but as she takes in the sight of him, her smile fades.
    “What?” he asks, because he is unaware of himself.
    He was always lean, Stanley, but he’s ten pounds leaner than he was two weeks ago. His clothes are not dirty, not stained, but they are tired. They hang off him at odd angles as if the green/blue stripes of the shirt are melting away from him. His eyes go squinty and wide, squinty, wide, as he has trouble focusing.
    “Have you been sick, or what?” she asks, overcoming the initial shock to approach him. She puts her hands around his waist, then moves them up to feel his ribs. “Jesus,” she says.
    “Yes,” Stanley says quickly. “I’ve been sick. That’s why … I didn’t want to see you until I was better.”
    “And … this is better? What were you before, dead?”
    “Yes,” he laughs weakly. “I was a mess. But not anymore.” He pulls her closer to him, gives her the best hug he can manage.
    “I’ve been calling you,” she says, hugging him likewise.
    “I’m sorry,” he says.
    “You haven’t been calling me,” she says.
    “I’m sorry,” he says.
    And for the moment that is good enough. Stanley buries his face into the neck of Olivia, into her hair and her shoulder, rubbing his face side-to-side over her, smelling the living patchouli bliss of her.
    A small groan of appreciation comes out of him, and Olivia laughs.
    “See,” she says, “you should have called me.”
    “I should have. I know it. Olivia, I’m so glad—” The tumblers turn, in the lock, in the door. Olivia starts. “What is that? Who is that?” Stanley doesn’t even answer. He shakes his head and shakes his head, as his brother opens the door, snaps the chain taut, then bangs and bangs at the door until he’s let in.
    “Mother called. Won’t even tell me where they are. Afraid. Everyone’s doing fine, though.
    “Funny, huh? Everyone’s doing fine.
    “He’s downstairs cooking again. For me. That’s all he does. Cooks, and cleans, and shops with the cash that comes in the mail every couple of weeks. No return address. They won’t even risk sending checks, in case they’re traced back somehow.
    “Cooks, cleans, and shops. Cooks, cleans, and shops. For me. It’s all for me.
    “He keeps an amazing house. Truly. Nobody ever knew this, because he never did anything for anybody before. He does everything now. He never stops. He never, ever, ever stops. “I’m not going to graduate. You have to go to school to graduate, so I’m not going to graduate.”
    “What is this?” Stanley snaps, sitting down to breakfast. Satan has prepared every meal for months now, since their mother left.
    “It’s breakfast,” Satan says flatly.
    “It isn’t breakfast. Breakfast is eggs, and cereal, and toast, and stuff like that. This isn’t anything like that.”
    Satan stands there, the half-empty pot in one hand, a ladle in the other.
    “It’s soup. Stan. It’s soup, that I made out of things that we had around. The money is just enough, you know, so I have to stretch it. They’re doing that on purpose, you know, to get me back. But I can do this, it’s just there’s not a lot around right now. I have to think of something. But it’s pretty close to a recipe from one of the books I found ….”
    Stanley slowly slides the bowl away.
    “Soup isn’t breakfast.”
    Satan puts the ladle back in the pot, slides the bowl back again toward his brother.
    “I told you, we don’t have any breakfast stuff. There’s a lot of good food in here. Tomatoes and onions and celery and fish stock—”
    Each has a hand on the bowl now, applying pressure. They could just as easily be pulling as pushing it, because it remains frozen in position between them. Two dogs, equal might, struggling over a scrap of tough meat.
    They stare.
    “No, thank you,” Stanley says.
    “You have to. You’re