Message of Love Read Online Free PDF

plotting, and visiting.”
    “Us?”
    “Yes. This weekend.”
    It was a Thursday. I scanned our room, wondering what dirty laundry or which of the somewhat gay posters we’d acquired might sour her opinion of our living quarters.
    Sensing my unspoken ‘Why?’, Everett said, “Her excuse is a belated birthday lunch for me, a shopping binge and a visit with some old college lady pals, or so she said.”
    “But?”
    “Of course she’s checking up on us.”
    Although my own meager gift would pale in comparison, I knew Everett appreciated it, a cute Curious George children’s book. It referred to our corny pet names for each other, he the monkey to my giraffe. Such intimacies –that we’d decided upon the names on our first night together– were kept hidden from others, friends and family alike. 
    Diana Forrester had pretty much let us be for a few months, so I shouldn’t have been worried. She had enjoyed some time with her son, without my presence, over Spring Break, when Everett was in Pittsburgh staying with his father.
    My train trips to spend the weekend with him had been carefully choreographed around her own requests to see him. His sister Holly had been more than accommodating, letting me stay with her when Everett visited his mother’s fancy new apartment in Fox Chapel.
    But her impending visit set me on edge. Although our initial clashes were nearly forgotten, I had a sense that she had merely been biding her time, and that time was up.
    My efforts to scrupulously clean our dorm room were for naught. By Saturday, we were set to have dinner at her hotel, the Bellevue-Stratford. “Mother travels first class or not at all,” Everett informed me.
    I’d carefully ironed button-down shirts for Everett and myself, and had hung our jackets and pants at the ready that afternoon when she called.
    “No, Mother, you don’t need to send a car. We can drive,” Everett argued over the phone, keeping his tone even while rolling his eyes at me.
    “Yes, Seven o’clock. Yes, we’ll be dressed appropriately.” Across the room, I made a grand silent gesture of displaying our suits like a game show model.
    “So, no grand tour of our r-r-rooms, Sir?” I joked, rolling my R’s after he hung up.
    “Apparently not. But a word of warning at dinner; don’t order anything from the menu that you can’t pronounce.”
     
    Out on the streets, having found a parking spot surprisingly near the hotel’s entrance, I kept my sometimes worried nature on an even keel. Everett wheeled beside me, in a chipper mood. We approached a high unramped curb, but before I could even offer to help, he simply popped a wheelie and jumped over it. His jacket and tie, combined with his black fingerless gloves, gave him the look of some sort of classy action hero.
    As we rounded a corner, a gust of wind, thick and humid, whirled around the nearby tall buildings and blasted us. I saw Everett recognize someone ahead of us on the sidewalk. He paused, reached into his inside breast pocket for his wallet, then extracted a ten-dollar bill, which he slipped inside his glove.
    I saw what, or who, had inspired him. A lone Black man in a wheelchair, a bit disheveled, with a worn cardboard sign in his lap, was parked next to a newspaper rack on the sidewalk. Other people passing by gave him barely a glance, but Everett wheeled right toward him.
    “College Boy!” the man called out, his face brightening at our approach. Everett leaned forward, shook hands with the man, palming the extracted cash like a discreet card trick.
    “How’s it goin’, Ricky?” Everett smiled.
    “Fancy duds,” Ricky admired us. “Y’all goin’ to the opera or somethin’?”
    “Dinner with my mom. This is my best bud, Reid.”
    I shook Ricky’s extended warm hand, felt deep calluses. He smiled.
    “Any friend of College Boy’s a friend a mine,” Ricky said. “Where ya headed?”
    “The Bellevue-Stratford, believe it or not.”
    “Ooh, fancy! But careful ya