Wichita (9781609458904) Read Online Free Page B

one hand and, when Lewis has gone forward a few steps, leaps onto his back.
    â€œUgh!” Lewis says, staggering. But he’s pleased too, and, sensing a test of strength beneath the goofiness, hooks his hands under Seth’s legs and begins slogging toward the open door to the kitchen.
    Seth says, “Damn, son, you’re
thin
!” He pats Lewis’s ribs as if checking for weapons. “That bitch really stuck a
knife
in you.”
    â€œThanks for reminding me,” Lewis mutters, torn between wanting to object to Seth’s “bitch” and liking it.
    â€œThat’s OK, a
wound
is a
blessing
: it lets the light in,” Seth whispers urgently as Lewis slogs along. “But did she really say, ‘Change is good’?”
    Abby has evidently been passing along details. Lewis grunts his assent. They were Victoria’s parting words.
    â€œ
Change
isn’t
good
—change is
Satan incarnate
,” Seth says. “I hope you set the bitch straight on
that
. Because that is some dark-side shit if I ever heard it.”
    Abby, who has been watching their progress fondly, is now unsticking an envelope taped to the wall beside the door to the kitchen. Seth clears his throat and in a stuffy, maudlin voice recites, “‘I’m just
so grateful
to have you in my life—’”
    Abby lets her head fall forward then her shoulders shake in silent laughter. “‘As a
friend
,’” Seth goes on, “‘as a
lover
, as a PARTNER!’”
    Seth lets out a triumphant bark of a laugh and Abby tosses the unopened envelope on the cluttered workbench and goes inside. “Signed ‘D’!” Seth calls after her.
    â€œD” is for “Donald.” Lewis met him briefly in the spring, when he and Abby stopped in New York on the way back from a trip to Virginia, where Donald’s children from a former marriage live with their mother in a Christian Fundamentalist compound. Lewis just hopes he hasn’t moved in. There’s been no word of that from Abby, but then there was no word from her about Seth either.
    Lewis carries Seth up the wheelchair ramp and across the threshold of the kitchen, where he sets him down. Bright new copper pots hang from a wire mesh frame on the ceiling and there’s a big gleaming espresso machine, a wood block slotted with fancy knives—a general air of prosperity and renovation. Lewis wonders whether it’s connected to the Birthday Party money then touches the slab of bills in his pocket to be sure it’s still there—yes. Thinking too of Seth’s hug and piggy-backing, the possibility of a pickpocketing from proudly street-schooled Seth, if only as a prank.
    Abby is busily laying out hors-d’oeuvres on trays for the Hydro Stick cocktail party. She declines Lewis’s offer of help as if slightly startled by the idea, while behind her Seth, two beers held aloft, beckons frowningly: leave the little woman to her work and come party.
    Lewis follows him into the adjoining breakfast nook, where, resting light as a puppet in her wheelchair pulled up to the table, is teenaged Stacy. She suffers from a mystery degenerative condition but is pretty in a pale, pixieish way that reminds Lewis of the illustrations of Loki in
D’Aulaire’s
Book of Norse Gods and Goddesses
. With a thin arm, she hails Lewis, who waves back feeling the usual initial stab of pity for her and guilt at his own health and able body.
    Sitting next to her is Cody, Seth’s homeschool classmate and sometime bandmate who moved to Wichita to live with an aunt when he was kicked out of a FLDS “plyg” community in Texas. His credulous, stoned brown eyes lighting up at the sight of Lewis, he hops up to give him a pounds embrace, his wife-beater T tucked into a pair of jeans so truncated that the entirety of his narrow ass bulges beneath the taut cotton like a head concealed in a perp walk.
    Across from them is