Collection Read Online Free PDF

couldn’t see straight.   He might be my friend now, but chances are he wouldn’t be by this time tomorrow night.
    The phone switched to a dial tone, and I hung it back in the cradle.   I turned around and saw Ava.   She stood in the doorway to the kitchen.   She was smiling.   It was the first time I’d seen her smile like that in almost three years.  
    It broke my heart to have to tell her.
     
    ~
     
    “You’re going to forget about it, and you’re going to take this job.”
    “I can’t do that.   Marcus needs me to—”
    “Don’t start with what Marcus needs, Jack.   Fuck him.   I need you to do this.   Your son needs you to do this.   Marcus doesn’t need you to do anything.   He has his own son.   Let him take care of Marcus.”
    “His son is a degenerate who doesn’t care if he lives or dies.”
    “So it’s your responsibility?”   There were tears in her eyes waiting to fall.   “You’re putting him ahead of your own family.”
    “He’s family, too.”
    She laughed.   “That old man is not family.”
    “He is to me.”
    Ava stared at me for a moment, then shook her head and said, “How’d you get so fucked up?”   
    I didn’t answer, and she turned and walked out to the living room.   I stayed in the kitchen and listened to her cry.  
    The back door of our apartment opens onto a fire escape overlooking the alley.   I took a beer from the refrigerator and climbed out and sat on the cold metal stairs.   The air outside was cold and it felt good against my skin.   Down below I heard the homeless shuffling between the dumpsters.   I thought about the distance between them and me, and as far as I could tell, there wasn’t much of one.
    The way I saw it, I had two choices.   Take this job and let Marcus go or help Marcus and lose the job.   If I took the job it would move my family out of this shit-hole apartment and get us on our way.   It was what Ava wanted, and it would be best for Jacob.  
    Then there was Marcus.
    Why did I feel such a loyalty to him?   Was it because he was there when I needed a friend?   Did I feel some twisted father-son bond with him that kept me from thinking straight?   Whatever it was, it was making it hard to do the smart thing, and I knew it.
    I was still thinking about Marcus when the back door opened and Ava came out onto the fire escape.
    “Jacob is asleep,” she said.   “He’s growing so fast.”
    I agreed.
    “We need to start thinking about his future, and sometimes I don’t think you do.”
    “That’s not fair,” I said.
    “I think it’s more than fair.   What’s not fair is you putting Marcus and that diner before your son.”
    I’d heard all this before, but when I went to speak she held up a hand, stopping me.
    “Jack, we need this job.”   Her voice was cold.   “I don’t care how you got it, but it’s a blessing and we need it.”
    “I know, but I can’t abandon Marcus.”
    Ava looked down at her hands, and shook her head.   “If you don’t take this job, I’m leaving, and I’m taking Jacob with me.”
    “What?”
    “I don’t have a choice.   If you put Marcus ahead of your family, then there is no point in staying with you because you aren’t the man I want raising my son.”
    “Jacob is my son, too.”
    Ava nodded.   “If you really understand what that means then there’s no problem.”
     
    ~
     
    I’d known Sergeant Greg Nash since I was a kid.   When I was six he arrested my father for breaking my mother’s jaw.   When I was twelve, he arrested him again for throwing her through a sliding glass door.   She wound up needing forty-seven stitches that night to close a gash in her leg, and the next day I was taken from the house and put into foster care.   I stayed there until I was thirteen and stole a car.   After that my foster parents didn’t want me, and I was put in a juvenile home.  
    Sergeant Nash came by every couple weeks to see how I was doing.   Eventually I