Blood Relations by Chris Lynch Page B

my damn home, or isn’t it?” I shook my fresh cut head again, frisky as a clipped dog.
    Felina followed me to the door, stood on the porch drying her hands with a dish towel as she watched me trot down the stairs. “You could stay here,” she said. “In Angel’s room.”
    “Thank you very much,” I said, stopping and turning to stare up at her. I wanted to then. I wanted to stay there. And I didn’t want Toy to come home, and I sure didn’t want big old Carlo to come home. Which was another good reason to get out of there.
    But mostly I wanted, I had to go back to my own house. Mine . A guy’s got to have a place, or he ain’t nothin’.
    “Thank you very much,” I said again, “thanks for everything.” Then I started my high-bounce, tail-swinging march home.

Brother Love
    I HEARD THEM BEFORE I even turned the corner. They were out back barbecuing. The charred meat smell brought the reality back to me. I got a shiver. Did I really want this? No, but it wasn’t as if Terry and his boys and this neighborhood and all the crap that goes along with it were ever going to go away. So what was I worth if I couldn’t stand up to it?
    “What the hell happened to your head?” one fat Cormac said as I reached the back porch. The Cormacs were spread out on lounge chairs flanking a giant Coleman cooler, guarding the beer like the two stone lions outside the Copley Plaza, only with bigger heads, bigger mouths, bigger bellies. Danny was passed out lying in the grass on his back. There were two middle-aged barflies from the Bloody wearing green nylon Emerald Society windbreakers, pitching horseshoes at the far end of the yard. Terry, working the grill, stared up at me as he sucked on a beer so hard it made a small whirlpool in the bottle. He was staring at my hair.
    “I got me a new do,” I said. “Like it?”
    “Hell no,” the Cormacs said.
    “Hell no,” Danny said, keeping his eyes closed.
    “You got a call,” Terry snapped as he squirted lighter fluid all over the meat on the grill, raising a three-foot flame. “Some wench named Evelyn.”
    I gritted. “And?”
    “I told her to bring her little brown ass over to our party.” He looked up at me and grinned hard.
    I turned around. I thought I wanted to play. I realized now I didn’t.
    “Where you goin’, boy?” he called.
    I stopped at the door but didn’t turn to face him. “I’m goin’ into my room, in my house,” I said.
    “Don’t be a damn pig!” he yelled. “You can’t go in there. Frankie and Ned are in there with Honey.”
    I sighed. “Why my room?”
    “You jokin’? I don’t want that shit all over my sheets.”
    The Cormacs laughed, the old guys laughed, I heard the three people laugh from my room. The dogs Bobo and Bunky lifted their heads from where they were lying stupid under the porch and they howled.
    “Hey,” Terry called. “That Evelyn, she that spaniel bitch Baba told us about? You tappin’ that, Mick?”
    I turned now, walked down the stairs toward Terry, and got in his face. “What was that, Terry? I didn’t quite hear ya.”
    First he laughed it off, looked over my shoulder at his laughing buddies, pretended to pretend to be scared. He took a step back and started working the grill again. I stepped up to him again, talking straight into his ear. “I said, I didn’t hear you, Terry.”
    This time he looked up and into my eyes. Then he looked away. “Nothin’, Jesus, what’re you comin’ in here all tense about, Mick? Jesus. Have a beer for chrissake, will ya? Jesus.”
    He hadn’t finished talking before one of the brothers had rolled a beer across the lawn, landing it near my feet. “No thanks,” I said.
    Terry scooped it up. “Your loss,” he said. “But stick around anyhow, ’cause Baba and Augie are gonna be back any minute with some wicked entertainment. Relax, bro.”
    If ever I heard an invitation to beat feet, that was it. Terry’s sudden turn into sugary snaky sweetness, the power drinking