Read Online Warrior Angel by Robert Lipsyte - Free Book Online Page B

conditioning slip.”
    Sonny nodded. “I felt like I was digging a hole, couldn’t stop digging the hole, just getting deeper and deeper in.”
    â€œBut you jumped out, Sonny.” Starkey swallowed his excitement. All the years of therapy paying off—I should be a shrink. “You shook loose of Hubbard, came back here.”
    â€œYou helped me do that.”
    Starkey felt almost dizzy with the intensity of Sonny’s stare. They were eye locked, nothing else happening in the world but the energy flowing between them.
    Suddenly Sonny stood up, so quickly the stool toppled over behind him and ribs scattered on the table. Steel shutters snapped down over his eyes. “Better get some sleep.” He marched across the gym and piled three mats in a corner. He yanked off his running shoes.
    â€œThere’s a couch in Johnson’s office,” he said. “Up at six.”
    He wrapped a big towel around himself and sank to the mats. He pulled his knees to his chest and was asleep before Starkey pulled the light cord.
    The couch was old and stained and smelly, there were hard spots and soft spots, and it took Starkey a while to burrow his body into a groove. But he was too excited to sleep right away. He had made the connection. Sonny was listening to him. And he’d stayed cool.
    But Sonny was going to be tough. The way he had suddenly jumped up to end the conversation. A warning bell had gone off in his head when he had felt Starkey getting too close. Wasit about accepting help from someone else? Maybe he had a fear of becoming vulnerable to someone else, and then abandoned, the way his mother had dumped him on the Res for months at a time.
    Maybe that’s too simple, the quickie, Family Circle Jerk explanation. I’ll need to get to the real Sonny. And then maybe he’ll open up so I can save him.
    I’ll have to take it easy bringing him to that point. Starkey remembered once going fishing with Stepdad, who kept lecturing him to reel in firmly but slowly or the fish would snap the line and swim away. He’d listened to what Stepdad said and kept jerking on the rod all day long so the fish could break away to freedom.
    He’d have to play Sonny slowly to bring him into the boat.
    After a while the lights of a pink dawn bled through the dusty windows of Donatelli’s Gym. On the Harlem street below, a garbage truck ground up metal to a chorus of drunks.
    Sonny kicked over a metal bucket. “Let’s go, Warrior Angel.”
    Through gummy eyelashes Starkey saw the clock over Johnson’s desk. It was just five-thirty. He staggered out and watched Sonny wash his face and head in a mop sink, then shake off the water like a dog.
    â€œWe’ll get coffee and oranges at Kim’s.”
    â€œNot even six,” said Starkey.
    â€œBest time to run, before the car fumes.”
    â€œYou want me to run with you?” Maybe I can do it, he thought. I wasn’t kicked off the cross-country team for being too slow.
    â€œYou’re on the bike.”

13
    O NCE S ONNY FELT the heat rising up his legs, the blood running free through loosening muscles, he could imagine toxins draining out of his body and the darkness slipping out of his mind. He always felt better when he was running, best of all on a crisp morning when the run was the start of a training day. He had a plan, he was in control. He knew what he was doing.
    He could hear Starkey, hunched under his backpack, wheezing along behind him on the battered old gym bike, towels and water bottles in the basket, squeaking along a slalom course of garbage and broken bottles and ruptured concrete on the fifteen blocks down to Central Park. His steering was a little erratic, but he was pedaling steadily enough to keep up.
    Been a while since I had someone I liked on the chase bike behind me, he thought. A long time since I opened up the way I did last night.Warrior Angel? More like the president of the Sonny