Read Online Chump Change by G. M. Ford - Free Book Online Page B

said.
    “I will.”
    And that was that.

     
    “How’d it feel seeing Rebecca again?” Rachel asked.
    “Very uncomfortable,” I said.
    We were hunkered down in front of the TV, in what used to be my old man’s office. As soon as I came into my trust fund, I’d had it ground-up renovated into something I could live with. Had I left it the way it had been, he’d always have been sitting behind the desk, glowering at me, disapproving of damn near everything I did. The enormous oil portrait of him that used to hang across from his desk may have been packed in a crate up in the attic, but some astral vestige of Big Bill Waterman still seemed to hang in the air like cannon smoke.
    Rachel snuggled deeper into the crook of my arm. “Uncomfortable is good,” she said around a mouth full of popcorn. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
    “That’s one of the things I like about you. You’re honest, even when it’s nasty.”
    “When it comes to you, big fella, I can get downright avaristic.”
    “Avaristic . . . is that a word?”
    “It is now.”
    I laughed. “Somebody way back in the seventeen hundreds said that ‘avarice is the sphincter of the heart.’ ”
    She laughed out loud. “Some aspects of human nature defy time.”
    An electronic signal began to beep.
    “What’s that?” Rachel asked.
    “The security system. Probably a rabbit on the lawn or something.”
    The beeping stopped.
    And then started again. More insistent this time.
    I slid myself out from under the blanket and made my way to the front hall, where I pulled open the closet door and hit the master switch. All ten cameras blinked to life. The yard lit up like Safeco Field. My neighbors hate it when I do that.
    A pair of legs were hanging down the front wall. I watched in silence as they eased their way to the ground, dusted off, and turned my way. It was him. The kid cop.
    Keith. I sighed and shut the system down.
    He was reaching for the bell when I jerked open the door.
    “Thought you were going back home,” I said, testily.
    “I did.”
    “And?”
    “They put my stuff in the street.”
    “Who did?”
    “The county. I’d been staying in one of their subsidy units. Rent-free. You know . . . until my probationary period was over and I could afford something of my own.”
    “And they evicted you?”
    “Twenty-four-hour notice right there on the door.”
    I wanted to say “I told you so” but stifled it.
    “I’ve got company” was all I could think to say.
    “Oh . . . I’m sorry . . . I’ll . . .” He gestured toward the street.
    “Hang on,” I said, handing him the door.
    I turned and walked back into the den, as I called it these days. Rachel looked up when I stopped in the doorway.
    “We’ve got company,” I said.
    “Really?”
    I gave her the Reader’s Digest version of The Keith Taylor Story. “He doesn’t seem to have anyplace else to go,” I said at the end.
    “Then you should invite him in,” she said.
    I pointed at her. “Maybe you want to . . .”
    She looked down at herself and smiled. “You mean my tits.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “You might want to . . .”
    She scrambled to her feet. “I’ll find a few more clothes,” she said with a malicious grin, and padded off toward the master bedroom at the back of the house.
    While she gussied herself into semi-respectability, I found the kid another ancient Diet Coke and ensconced him at the kitchen table.
    “I should go,” he said.
    “Go where?” I asked.
    He thought it over. “Home, I guess,” he said after a pause.
    “Sometimes that’s best,” I said in my Yoda voice.
    Rachel rescued us from further inanities by walking into the kitchen, wearing my new bathrobe and a smile. I got the impression the kid had never been that close to so much prime woman flesh before. I recognized the shallow breathing and moronic expression. Happened to me every time she took off her clothes.
    I introduced them. Everybody made nice.
    “This