The Failure Read Online Free Page A

embarrassment on your cheek that only you can see, but you see it all the time, whether looking in the mirror or in the mind’s eye. This stamp, or emblem, this scarlet letter, B for Briar, is a thing you will go to great lengths to conceal or overcompensate to erase—unless or until it works to your advantage, which you’d be surprised how often that can happen in a place like Los Angeles, where anything out of the ordinary can work to your advantage.

8. PROMPTED BY HIS FATHER’S CONVERSATION, GUY HAS A MENTAL FLASHBACK TO HIS CHILDHOOD IN DAYTON, OHIO, WHILE SITTING IN THE RESTAURANT PRETENDING TO LISTEN

    P ulling into the parking space in front of the bank in his father’s Cutlass, Guy Forget had the impression of berthing a small schooner. The rump of the car sagged almost to the ground under the weight of its trunk’s cargo; as a result the car’s nose lifted at a haughty angle, and imprecisely responded to the shift of its wheels, as if resenting an imposition it had borne without comment for too long. Guy parked the heavy Oldsmobile with practiced care, and withdrew from the backseat a hand truck which he dragged behind him with one hand, groping with the other for the keys he had stupidly shoved in his jeans pocket before unlocking the trunk.
    Heat. The keynote of the new day resounded dully in Guy’s brain as he fumbled with the car keys. Though much of Third Street still lay swathed in blue shadow, long fingers of sunlight groped the dingy crevices between the bank and the adjacent drugstore, pooling on the latter’s green-and-white-striped awning, leaving the sullen windows beneath to swelter darkly. The sun-swollen leaves of a young sycamore, trapped in a square of dirt in front of the bank, spackled the cracks in the sparsely peopled sidewalk with a paste of piebald shade. The air was moist and heavy. A gang of cicadas sawed the heavy, moist air.
    Bending to extract the first of a dozen or so hefty canvas bags filled with rolls of variously denominated coins from his trunk, Guy felt a rivulet of sweat snake from one armpit down toward his waist. His white T-shirt stuck in wet patches to his skin. He lifted the bag with two hands and plopped it on the hand truck, then another, and another, shifting and stacking them expertly so that in the end all fit. Guy was proud of his prowess at stacking the bags of coins. Saved time too—one trip instead of two. And safer. Wouldn’t have to leave any sitting in the trunk while he went into the bank.
    He exhaled gratefully as he entered the musty cool of the old bank, pushing his hand truck through the darkly tinted glass doors. An elderly customer with a red jowly face, wearing a faded straw hat, stood before one of the two tellers, staring bemusedly at his passbook. Guy wheeled across the floor to the unoccupied teller.
    It would be so easy, thought young Guy, to swivel the hand truck back out the door, repile the bags in the trunk, and jet out of town. Who would even miss me? Dad would miss the money before he missed me, but he’d get over it. Can’t be more than ten thousand bucks in here. That’s peanuts to him, but it’s a year of independence for me. Marcus would be glad to be rid of me, he considered, there can be little doubt about that. And Mom … it’s always difficult to know what’s going on in Mom’s head at any given time. Probably Mom’s where I learned to hide my true feelings. In any case, Mom would be the key to the whole plan. Because eventually I’d run out of money, and I’d have to come crawling back home, the prodigal son in his tattered rags, and while Dad wouldn’t want to take me back, and Marcus would act like I wasn’t there, I could probably count on Mom at least to feed and clothe and bathe me. I don’t know why I thought bathe. I didn’t mean physically bathe. Obviously. I meant allow me to bathe. Because I assume that, on the run as I would be, I wouldn’t have much time to bathe.
    Which, on second thought, is