Read Online Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley by Ann Pancake - Free Book Online

could hold. She knew it wasn’t Melissa’s house, Melissa lived in an apartment near Rees Park, Uncle Bobby had pointed it out one time, and Uncle Bobby was never wrong about that kind of thing. She looked for Melissa’s car, she knew that, too, from before Nathan and Melissa broke up, but the only car was a newish Ford truck. She wondered was it something to do with one of the belt-thin boys, maybe a falling out or, more frightening, an argument with a dealer. And then an image bloomed in her mind, and as soon as it did, she felt so foolish her face flushed. The hard brown handsomeness. The grooves from his nose to his lip. His fear anyway.
    They smoked the roach until it seared their fingernails. Nathan flipped the last of it onto the berm. He snapped down his face mask and turned the key. He rotated the bike, unrushed, his feet still on the ground. Then he leaned into it and they were smooth-moving, the corn, the flat, the stucco house falling fast behind.
    THE NEXT TIME Uncle Bobby left without inviting her along, Janie waited ten minutes, then headed to the Coin Castle.
    The Coin Castle had not a single castle attribute, not even a fake turret or a crenellated facade, was nothing but a cube squatting in a black asphalt lot. From the edge of that sun-fired lot, Janie squinted at the open door, the Coin Castle’s interior as dark as a midday tavern. She hesitated again on the threshold. The games sizzled and flashed in that dark, they cheeped and sang, she recognized their voices, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man and Ms., she’d played them all, always in bars, never sober. A pack of boys under fourteen jostled eachother and the machines, the place ripe with the aroma of grape gum blended with the high, sour odor of prepubescent boy sweat. When she finally slipped in, she pulled off to the side and willed herself unnoticed. As soon as her eyes adjusted, she spotted Uncle Bobby.
    He stood beside the counter where they got their tokens, bought their candy, complained when their money was lost. He was fresh from his after-work shower, and now that she saw him, she could detect Old Spice floating through the grape gum and boy smell. His thinning hair neatly combed, his polo shirt tucked into his too-tight shorts—in perpetual denial of his weight, he insisted on buying them one size too small—Uncle Bobby rocked on his heels. And beamed at the woman behind the counter.
    A woman shaped like a planet with fine brown hair that fell straight to her shoulders like a thin fountain, making her face look rounder than it was. She wore over brown double-knit pants a smock top of Holly Hobbie fabric. And she was speaking, Uncle Bobby urging her on, “Mmmm-hmmm. Mmm-hmm.” Uncle Bobby attentive, enthusiastic, close to euphoric, now he was convulsing into laughter over something she’d said—“Oh, c’mon, Tessa! C’mon, now! You’re kidding me!”—and Janie shifted to where Uncle Bobby could see her.
    When he did, not a trace of embarrassment invaded his face. Not a trace of shame. After a short surprise, his face held only pleasure, and not just pleasure, Janie saw, but also pride. He stuck out his arm towards Janie. “Tessa, this is my niece, Janie. She works at the thee-ay-ter.”
    Tessa turned to Janie, smiling, and extended her hand. Janie stepped towards her, and as she did, she was startled by how badly she wanted this for Uncle Bobby. Two boys slammed between her and the counter, slapped money down—“A pack of red hots!”—and Janie was reaching over them, taking the plump warm hand, saying, “Nice to meet you.”And while she was usually too nervous to look a stranger in the face for more than a few seconds, this time she looked longer. Because she wanted so urgently for it to be, even though right under that she knew someone like Uncle Bobby could never run a video arcade. Janie took the hand, looked in the face, and saw, first,