Pent Up Read Online Free

mug.”
    My bull’s-eye.
    “Whatsamatter? You said you were doing good.”
    “Yeah.” Ruben lifted a shoulder noncommittally. “Yeah, sure. I’m doing great.” Even if he couldn’t put his finger on the feeling that nagged him.
    Charles narrowed his eyes.
    “No. No way. It’s not that. I’m great. I just woke up late.” Ruben hoped that was the truth.
    “I don’t wanna come home to you punching holes in my wall.”
    “I promise.” None of that here. Ruben had patched plenty of walls on plenty of mornings.
    “Something funny there.”
    “Ha ha.” Charles balled up the sandwich shrapnel and tossed it. “What’s funny?”
    Ruben squinted. “He is.”
    “He is”—Charles overlapped his words—“a spruce goose laying golden eggs, baby. You better sit on that motherfucker till all of ’em hatch.”
    Ruben tapped the desk, then slid the check across the clutter toward his brother. Something Bauer had said, but what? It stuck in his teeth like gristle he couldn’t stop worrying with his tongue. “He’s all balls and fulla shit.”
    “So much the better. It’s all in his head, then, and he wants to put on a big fancy show. Paranoid on Park Avenue.” Charles rubbed his hibiscus gut and sat. “I think the problem is you’re looking for a problem where there ain’t none.” He plucked the retainer check off the desk. “Good gig. Easy money and no headaches. Fancy clientele. This is a milkbone. You chew on it all summer. Scare up business from his, uh, associates.”
    Ruben nodded.
    Charles held the check over his face and closed his smiling eyes like the zeros were sunshine. “Give him his show. Ya needta get laid. You need some new threads. Place of your own. Bauer’s your ticket. He does anything funny, you laugh.” A look.
    “Sure. I promise.”
    “And Rube.” He pointed, fake stern. “Up that penthouse, you better be passing out my cards like crabs.” Charles tried to sell it. “I’m taking care of you, man. You needed work and this deal’s a cinch.”
    As in, boring as hell. Ruben tried not to feel insulted.
    “You just got divorced. Off the bottle. And it’ll get you outta the apartment.”
    “So it’s bullshit.”
    “The check’ll clear.”
    “Fuck off. I mean that he’s in no danger.”
    “Psssh. Danger! I’m in danger, you’re in danger. Life is danger, bro.” Charles wiped his jowly chops. “Might as well get paid.”

CHAPTER TWO
     
     
    THERE’S ONLY one way to find out if a man is honest: ask him. If he says yes, he’s a crook.
    Ruben fidgeted in his brother’s little offices through a lunch he didn’t take and calls he didn’t answer. Something about Bauer’s flannel stare kept right on bugging him. “I’m gonna go to church.”
    Charles looked up at him and nodded. Church was Ruben’s code for an AA meeting, and Charles probably didn’t want to ask questions. “Sure.” He thumped Ruben’s back, man-to-manly.
    In the hall, Ruben pulled up the AA app and found a Big Book meeting at the Jan Hus Church on East Seventy-Fourth. He headed down the hot stairs.
    He skirted Central Park, nervous about navigating his way through the trees. Even at its margins, the air felt cooler than he’d expected, but then he was wearing an outsize cotton suit without a tie. He’d seen pictures of ponds and castles hidden in there, and hot girls running in their goddamn underwears practically.
    Nature was about the only thing he missed living in the city. He’d definitely be coming back to these trees when he felt braver.
    A half hour later, he reached a red brick church wrapped in gingerbread arches. He grabbed a folding chair with five to spare. Maybe fifteen people, mostly white and mostly older. Not surprising given what Charles had told him about the Upper East Side. Still, no one blinked at him. Mostly Ruben kept his head ducked, surprised to feel a sunburn on his neck.
    The meeting didn’t help: a roomful of wealthy retirees who treated it like a gabby social