Page 6 of Sean's Sunshine
“I told you, you’re not the first guy I’ve ever had to do that for,” Billy told him. He wasn’t exactlyenjoyingthe young detective’s discomfort so much asappreciatingit. The thing with living in the flophouse for two years was that boundaries had completely disappeared since day one. It was absolutely not unheard of to hear someone belting from theironebathroom, “Hey! Anybody out there? I did arms yesterday for my workout and I need someone to wipe my ass!” The fact that this filled Sean Kryzynski with mortification was like a sort of affirmation of the best of mankind.
“Please?” Kryzynski begged. “I can pretend it didn’t happen in the hospital, but here….”
Billy let out a sigh as the hallway opened up and they neared the dining room table, and what looked like really uncomfortable padded metal chairs.
“Look, I get it,” he admitted, helping his patient sit and then scooting him to the breakfast table. “I promise, this can be our last discussion about the matter. I don’t want you to feel bad because you’re still hurt.”
He straightened and turned toward the kitchen in time for Kryzynski’s weird little “hunh.”
“What? What is that sound?”
His startlement was met with a pair of puzzled blue eyes. “It was a ‘hunh’—I don’t think you’ll find it in the dictionary.”
“That,” Billy said accusingly, “was aJackson Riverssound.”
“What, the guy has his own lexi—” Labored breath. “—con now?”
“I don’t know what that word you just used was, but yes. Believe me, in our world, that man is sacred. We study his ways. Did you steal a Jackson Rivers sound, and why?”
“I didn’t steal it!” Kryzynski argued before taking a deep breath. “And I was just… you were nice. I was confused. You’re only nice sometimes.”
Great. He wassupposedto be nursing the guy back to health, but apparently he was being a big fat dick.
“I’m not trying to be a bastard,” he admitted, opening the refrigerator door and studying the contents. “I was the oldest of six and in charge of mustering the troops. If a shoelace was untied or a backpack missing, guess who caught hell?”
“Guillermo?” Kryzynski asked, and Billy glared over his shoulder, damning himself for letting the name slip when Mommy Kryzynski had shown up.
“Could you forget you ever heard that name?” he asked soberly.
Kryzynski cocked his head as though thinking about it, and then gave a negative little shake of his chin. “You are far too interesting as a Guillermo and not just a Billy,” he said, and then gulped a breath of air and coughed.
“Stop trying to talk,” Billy muttered gruffly. “Anyway, I loved my siblings. Like, you would notbelievehow much I miss the little assholes. But I sucked at hiding bruises, so I got real good at not fucking around.” He sighed. “The old man ran his house like he ran his unit, and I was his first lieutenant. You learn to be an asshole if you need to be, you know?”
“Yeah,” Kryzynski said, nodding. “I get it.”
Billy didn’t want to talk about it anymore—hadn’t wanted to talk about it in the first place—so he went back to the refrigerator, trying to remember Henry’s rudimentary cooking lessons. Oh! Eggs, cheese, onions, mushrooms…. Henry’s snarky commentary inserted itself into his head. “I know what’s for breakfast,” he said proudly, gathering ingredients.
“What?” Kryzynski asked.
“A make-you-a frittata!”
“What?” And now the guy sounded riled and irritated again, and there were no personal revelations or sudden intimacies between them.
Perfect.
“You’ll see. This is Henry’s first cooking lesson. Easy enough for a little kid to do it.”
Chuckling to himself, Billy set about preparing a basic egg scramble, remembering the words to the song he and the other flophouse guys had made up to sing to the old Disney standard and belting it out.
Make you a frittata,
With just a couple of eggs.
Make me a frittata,
There’s plenty of ways.
You won’t have to worry about food the rest of your day.