Hothouse by Chris Lynch Read Free Book Online Page B

knock down eight pins with my next ball and my dad is clapping enthusiastically for me. I know he means it, but I don’t even look around at him.
    â€œWhat is wrong with you?” I snap, waiting for my ball to return.
    â€œThere is nothing wrong with me,” he says, the cheeriness of only a few seconds ago vanished. Killed, actually, by me.
    My ball returns and I use it to pound down the last two pins. He doesn’t clap. We don’t talk. The mood remains grim for the rest of the game, and the inappropriateness of it bothers me every bit as much as the inexplicable cheer that came before.
    Adrian and I have finally gotten back to something like our regular bowling rotation. We normally go at least once a week and often twice but with the things that have happened, bowling slid down the list of priorities, even though with the things that have happened bowling would have been as welcome an event as any I could think of. One of the beautiful things about the nature of bowling is that when I am at it, I can almost leave all the rest of the stuff behind. And that happens to be one of the beautiful things about Adrian’s company, too—that he can make me feel like I am somebody other than that guy who lost his father. So the combination of Adrian and bowling is like some great sensory deprivation tank in my life, only with scorekeeping.
    Unless something unusual gets in the way.
    First, we go to pay for our two strings and our joker shoes, and the guy behind the counter, a guy I have seen hundreds of times over the years, with his timeless ageless sad acned face, just shakes his head grimly and backs away from the counter. He looks almost spooked, treating the money like it’s a live grenade or some voodoo thing that will haunt him forever if he touches it.
    â€œThank you,” I say, but he just shakes his head again and waves me off like I shouldn’t even be doing that much.
    â€œI could get used to that,” Adrian says.
    â€œYou probably shouldn’t,” I say.
    We walk up to lane eight, toting the goofy shoes. “Check it out,” says Adrian, pointing.
    It is a poster, and it is posted here in our private getaway from everything. It’s on red paper with black lettering and looks like a seven-year-old did it with a marker and made photocopies. It’s taped to the ball polisher, with several others distributed around the place:
    OUTRAGEOUS COURAGEOUS BARBECUE
    MEMORIAL DEDICATION
    SATURDAY NOON TILL AFTERNOON
    MUSIC BY THE LEGENDARY
    HOTHOUSE HEROES
    BRING EVERYONE, COME OUT AND PAY
    TRIBUTE TO TWO OF OUR OWN
    â€œWhat’s with firefighters and barbecuing all the time?” Adrian asks. “Whenever they get together they’re firing it up. You would think hot coals and flammable liquids would be the last things they’d want to see on the day off.”
    â€œ One of ours ,” I say out loud, staring at the cheap poster.
    â€œNice of you to share,” Adrian says.
    â€œWell … you’re welcome,” I say. “And really, I’m happy to share, and I love the fact that everybody wants to share my dad....”
    â€œRight,” he says, “it’s like, a community thing. Like they are part of this community and this community is proud—”
    â€œAnd that’s really great. But I have to say, seeing it here, right here”—I tap the words on the poster—“I just get this little jolt, this shock of, selfishness is maybe what it is, but part of me thinks, well the community’s dads didn’t have their faces burnt off, did they?” The way I fire-breathe the word community , I could be aiming to burn unfortunate Adrian’s face off. “The community goes home at night and eats supper with dad, and dad is there and so is his face. So the ‘our own’ thing … it’s great, but it’s … no, it’s great.”
    I don’t like to be reminded about their faces but