Five Boroughs 01 - Sutphin Boulevard Read Online Free

to move out of our mother’s house again. I knew it would be condemned if I left it in his care, even though it had been more his home than mine for the past decade. Raymond seemed hell-bent on doing as little as possible until the money our mother left him was gone.
    “What are you talking about?” I slid off the arm of the couch and sank down onto one of the cushions.
    “I told you—we got family shit.”
    “Ray, I’m hungover. I don’t have patience for fifty questions.”
    “That’s your problem. I got the car. Get your shit on so we can go.” Raymond looked at his watch. Perhaps he didn’t have room in his busy schedule of Xbox, weed, and random fuck buddies to squeeze in my demands for clarity. When I just stared up at him, he kicked my foot. “¡Vete!”
    “Vete p’al carajo.” I kicked him back. “What the hell is your problem?”
    “Look, Dad showed up, and I don’t got the patience for him. He and Titi Aida came by all of a sudden, claiming he needs cash and a place to stay.”
    My stomach twisted in a way that had nothing to do with my hangover. “No thanks, I’ll pass.”
    “You gotta be kidding me.”
    “I have to go to the mall, the pharmacy, the cleaners, and I have to figure out what reliable person is going to pay bills at the house while I’m gone. I also have to make sure I’m all planned out for school in September since I won’t be back until August. When I say I don’t have the time, I really don’t have the fucking time. Even if our father decided to pop back up because he’s out of beer money.”
    Raymond didn’t respond, and that indicated trouble. When I looked up, his eyes flashed in the way he reserved for fistfights. He reminded me too much of our father when he was angry—how his expression darkened before a coming beatdown. I was inching away when he grabbed my shoulder, but all he did was haul me to my feet.
    “If you leave him to me, I guarantee one of us will be in jail before the night is over. Now get your shit on and let’s go.”
     
     
    I SLID into the passenger’s seat of Raymond’s Altima and secured the seat belt to prevent flying through the windshield when he rear-ended someone like an asshole. Raymond’s driving was a summation of him as a human being: reckless and much too fast. That, combined with the queasy feeling in my stomach and the reggaeton he insisted on blasting, landed me in a shitty mood by the time we emerged from the heavy traffic on the Queensboro Bridge.
    I still knew nothing other than that our father had appeared after months of radio silence and he was being more of a dick than usual. Raymond was so vague and edgy that worst-case scenarios had begun to heighten my tension.
    I hadn’t seen my father since the day we’d all met with my mother’s attorney. Dear old dad had stormed out after realizing he was not a life insurance beneficiary and that the other half of the house was now in my and Raymond’s names. It had been an ugly scene, but I’d spent the past six months bracing myself for a reappearance. He always returned once he needed something he couldn’t scam from anyone else.
    I peered out the window through a pair of aviators and kept my forehead tilted against the glass until we turned into the driveway of the tan clapboard house we’d grown up in.
    Raymond shut off the engine and got out of the car, but I remained sitting and stared at the park across the street.
    As a teenager I’d cut school in Kings Park on a daily basis to play handball with older guys. I’d picked off the gay or curious ones to take up to the rooftop of one of the nearby apartment buildings to indulge in the kind of casual, reckless sex that would have made my health teacher cringe. I cringed just thinking back on it.
    The sound of my aunt Aida’s voice floating out from the house prompted me to drag myself out of the car. Unlike my father, she checked in with Raymond and me on a regular basis, but her pleading the old man’s case was