Read Online Saints of Augustine by P. E. Ryan - Free Book Online

papers in his bedroom at home.
    Kate stared down at the stinking piece of wood. “I made it really clear when we first started going out. You can do whatever you want, dope yourself up, live in a cloud. Fine. But I’m not interested in dating someone who gets high. You can do this stuff, or you can date me. That’s it.”
    â€œKate, I know that. Honestly, I’m not doing it anymore. That’s like a—a relic from the past. Look, give it to me.” She didn’t move. He took the pipe fromher hand and tossed it out the open window. It vanished into the palm scrub. “See? Gone.”
    She didn’t say anything.
    â€œAll right? Do you believe me?”
    â€œAll right,” she said finally.
    â€œThank you.” He leaned over and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. A long, awkward silence followed, while they both just sat there, staring forward at the beach. Charlie could hear his heart beating in his ears. “You want to go to a movie at the mall this weekend?”
    â€œSure,” she said, though her tone had flattened out some and she kept her gaze forward.
    â€œGood,” Charlie said. “Just us. Whatever movie you want.”
    He turned the key in the ignition.
    Â 
    That night, his father started crying at dinner. It seemed to come out of nowhere, and a moment later he was pinching his eyes with his fingers and it was over. Charlie sat across the kitchen table, and for some reason what he felt wasn’t sadness, but fear. “Are you all right, Dad?”
    â€œI’m fine .” He swallowed some wine and a bite of food and looked toward the television, which was on in the next room.
    â€œDo you…do you want to talk about anything?”
    â€œMe?” his father asked. “No. You mean, how was my day, that sort of thing?”
    â€œY-yeah,” Charlie said uneasily.
    â€œMy day was fine,” his father said in a flat voice.
    â€œDid you get out of the house any?”
    His father sniffed. He shot Charlie a look. “You like that question, don’t you? You ask me that almost every night.”
    â€œIt’s just a question.”
    â€œWell, yes, I drove to the office. Did some things around here. The usual.”
    The usual , Charlie thought. That meant he hadn’t done anything or gone anywhere.
    After his father had drifted off to sleep on the couch, he went to his room, put on some music, and settled down next to his open window with his headphones on and the fan going. It wasn’t so bad, what he was doing, was it? It wasn’t like hewas cheating on Kate. Lots of guys he knew at school had girlfriends and tried to mess around with other girls. This was just getting high and lying about it. Sue me , he thought, lighting his pipe.

6.
(Didn’t you move here from one of those square states?)
    Mr. Webber started pointing to his head long before he reached the Goody-Goody booth. Sam pretended not to see him. Standing behind the counter, he kept his eyes down on the round waffle iron and the spatula in his hand.
    â€œSam, how many times do I have to tell you? Hat .”
    â€œHuh? Oh, hi, Mr. Webber. I was just making some waffle cones. I want to be ready for the Saturday-night rush. Did I show you my trick with the miniature marshmallows to solve the leak problem?”
    â€œWhere is your hat ?”
    â€œIt’s around here somewhere. I’ll find it.”
    â€œThat was an awful visual I just got, Sam. I’m crossing the food court and I see eight different eateries, and eight identical mannequins behind the counters. If I were a potential customer, I could just as easily have gone over to the Cinnabon. Or the Dairy Queen. The eye should stop at Goody-Goody. That hat’s an attention magnet.”
    It certainly is, Sam thought. Mr. Webber was a widower and a retiree from the phone company, where he’d worked as a supervisor for forty years, and once he’d retired, he hadn’t