The Denver Cereal Read Online Free Page B

Retrieving a bottle of cold water,
he plopped down in a sagging armchair. The pre-dawn light greeted
him through the ancient leaded glass windows. Sarah wandered over
to him.
    “ Okay, I’m nervous,” Jacob
said.
    Sarah shook her entire
body and barked one sharp bark.
    “ You’re absolutely right,”
Jacob said.
    Pushing himself from the
armchair, he went to his closet to dress. A few miles pounding the
pavement would help. He could burn at least an hour running in City
Park.
    Then what?
    Jacob and Sarah jogged
down the long flight of stairs from his third-floor attic apartment
to the front door. Sarah sat while Jacob fumbled with the door,
then with the security door. Like a gentleman, he held the door for
Sarah. She romped to the slip of grass lining the flagstone
sidewalk. Jacob locked the doors and then stretched while Sarah
finished her business.
    Turning on his heart rate
monitor, Jacob noticed he had wasted another fifteen minutes. He
groaned at his own impatience. He had waited nine years to even
talk to Jill, and today . . .
    Unable to finish the
thought, he whistled for Sarah. Passing through the iron gate, they
set off down Race Street. They walked one short block. Turning
right onto Sixteenth Avenue, they took off toward East High School.
Jacob and Sarah fell into a slow, time-burning jog to warm up. They
made their way down the City Park Esplanade. Nodding to the grand
lady of the Thatcher Fountain, they ran into the park.
    The exertion helped
unravel his anxious mind. As his feet worked the pavement, his mind
drifted to memories of Jill.
    His mother, Celia, and her
best friend, Delphie, had gone to Pete’s Kitchen every Friday night
after their Herbs and Arts spiritual group. They prayed for Celia’s
health from six to ten and then celebrated with pancakes, eggs, and
sausage. A professional tarot reader, Delphie read the cards one
night and said his mother would meet someone significant. Celia
joked that she would meet a handsome man who would fill her last
year on earth.
    They met Jill.
    Jill had just started
working at Pete’s Kitchen. She was young, bright, and always
smiling. His mother and Delphie watched her blossom. Jill used to
tell Celia and Delphie that they were replacements for her mother.
Like good surrogate mothers, they bought the puppy Scooter as a
wedding present.
    Every Saturday morning,
Mom and Delphie regaled Jacob with Jill’s latest adventure. From
arguments with Trevor over having a baby to whether or not she
should quit high school, Jacob had a ring-side view of the infamous
Jill’s life. That’s what he called her, ‘the infamous
Jill.’
    But Jacob couldn’t care
less.
    Freaked out by his
family’s implosion, he focused on playing high school sports,
getting laid, and partying with his friends. Sure, he moved into
his mother’s three-story money pit, which he called “the Castle.”
Yes, he knew that cancer ate the very core of his mother. Of
course, he went to visit his father’s sec-witch-ary’s day-old
infant.
    These family matters were
simply a break between sports, sex, and friends. See the
sec-witch-ary’s baby, start as a safety for the East High Angels
and trounce their arch-rivals Montbello High. Go with Mom for
chemo, go get laid later. At eighteen-years-old, Jacob was
handsome, popular, and completely self-absorbed.
    Turning up Twenty-Third
Avenue to run the steep incline of the Park Hill Golf Course, Jacob
remembered the day he met the ‘infamous Jill.’
    The doctor told his mother
she wouldn’t see Easter. In response, his sister refused to return
from UCLA for her “fucked up family.” Of course, his parents’
divorce was final, so Dad was marrying his
sec-witch-ary.
    And Jacob tore his ACL
playing weekend warrior Ultimate Frisbee. Surgery and rehab kept
him off the track field that spring. Angry and bored, Jacob filled
dumpster after dumpster with Castle junk. Pulling up moldy carpet,
Jacob realized the carpet continued into an almost hidden