Burning Blue by Paul Griffin Read Free Book Online Page B

you he’s burned too. You know, like where you can’t see?”

    I got home from work at 11:00. We lived in one of those efficiency apartment complexes that are always full of bitterly divorced men and the odd widower with kids. The power lines sprayed from the phone pole and attacked the side of our building like blown snot. Dented, pigeon-crap-covered Dish Network discs tilted like begging hands. Even so, the rent wasn’t cheap in this last outpost of the coveted Brandywine zip code.
    My father was at the piano, this little electric job we picked up for his birthday at BJ’s with my discount, low-end keys on ironing board stilts. I recognized the piece, Rachmaninoff, Vespers, some doleful notes to be sure. On the side table: bottle of red wine, the second one. The first, a dead soldier, was on the kitchen counter, next to picked-at Mexican takeout.
    I would have asked him if he was okay, but he only would’ve told me to mind my own business. He’d catch an AA meeting the next morning on his way to work, and then he’d be good for a month or so before he fell off again. At least he wasn’t drinking and driving anymore, or that’s what he promised. But $4.99 a bottle? If you’re going to be bad, at least drink something good.
    You might think art critics make a lot of money. They’re lucky if they make almost enough. They’re really smart, and they dress like they’re heading to a cocktail party at the Princeton Club, if you don’t notice that their designer label clothes are irregulars pulled from the Marshalls clearance rack. They can carry on one heck of a conversation—charm you silly—but they’re not to be confused with the millionaires they cover in their columns. Stevie Nazzaro from Hoboken did well enough to get into Columbia on a scholarship, art history of all the useless things, but he would have been better off if he stuck with the wrestling. Naz the Knuckler, WWE smackdown champ or some crap like that.
    I think I was pretty close to getting him to give up on me, and then I could emancipate and be free of whatever it was I was living, just this day-to-day grayness. I’d move into the city and get by waiting tables or pushing flavored coffees at a godforsaken latte bar maybe. I could take subways instead of having to kick my skateboard everywhere. No more shoulder-less north Jersey roads without sidewalks, step-trucks and speeding Range Rovers sucking me into traffic. It would be better for my father too, having me out of the apartment. Couldn’t be easy living with a son of minor ambition.
    “You had therapy today, right?” he said. “You didn’t ditch, did you?”
    “I went.”
    “How was Mrs. Schmidt?”
    “It’s Doctor. Terrific.”
    “Any of that bullying crap going on again?” he said.
    “Nope. Thought you were getting home late.”
    “I did. You were later. You have to get right in their faces and give it back to them, Jay. I told you how many times, you can’t just roll over.”
    “It’s fine, Dad.”
    “Sure it is.”
    “Okay, don’t believe me.”
    “You’re holding back. Something big too. Your breathing, it’s solemn.”
    “How can breathing be solemn? It’s just breathing.”
    “I need to be out of town for a week.” He tapped the high end piano key. “This conference wants me to speak. The money is just north of lousy enough to turn down.”
    I checked the fridge for milk, nothing in there except duck sauce packets.
    “You hear what I said?” he said.
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “Then can you
acknowledge
you heard me?”
    “I
heard
you, man. Have a great trip.”
    “Hey, Jay? When do I stop getting blamed?”
    “Blamed for what?”
    “Everything.” He headed for his room with the wine. He halted at his bedroom door, as if he wanted to say something, but he didn’t. He went in. The door puffed shut.
    I grabbed what was left of the takeout and headed for my room, not much more than a closet with a bed that was too short for me, but it was on the back of