Roadside Bodhisattva by Paul Di Filippo Page B

little, but I tried to put that stupid feeling aside. I should just be glad to have her company. I noticed she hadn’t bothered with my books.
    I sat down on the edge of Sid’s bunk. The trailer was so small our knees were almost touching.
    “Not bad, not bad,” Sue told me. “No rap though?”
    “I don’t like that hip-hop shit.”
    Sue shrugged. “Your loss. Let’s listen to some Foo Fighters.”
    She dropped my iPod into a dock she had brought Soon the music was filling the trailer. I bet Sid would’ve had a fit if he had to listen to our music, him and his geezer tastes. So much for his surface coolness.
    We talked a little, mostly about school and stuff. Around seven-thirty, I began to get hungry. Last night I had been too tired to think about my stomach, but tonight was different.
    “What do you guys do for supper around here, with the diner closed?”
    “Oh, sometimes I whip up some mac and cheese, or nuke some fried chicken. Why, you hungry?”
    “I could eat something.”
    “Let’s go then.”
    We carried my iPod and the dock back to Sue’s rooms. She fixed the food while I sat at the tiny table in the kitchenette. When she was done, we both chowed down.
    “Man, that was great. Can I give your aunt some money to buy some more groceries for us?”
    Sue had lit a cigarette. She kept looking at the clock on the wall. It was nearing eight-thirty. “She wouldn’t mind.” Sue got up abruptly. “Kid, would you mind cleaning up? I’ve gotta be someplace.”
    “Uh, no. I mean, sure, go ahead.”
    Sue ran out. I wanted to look where she was going. Was someone picking her up, or was she taking Ann’s car again? But I held back. Her business was her own.
    I pumped up the volume as I cleaned the dirty dishes and pans. It must’ve been pretty loud, because soon Sid stuck his head in from the office and yelled, “Kid A! Turn that shit down!” Didn’t I predict he’d hate my music this loud?
     
     

 
Four
     
     
    Ann counted out the money into my hand, which was kinda puckery from hours in dishwater. “Thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, sixty-five. That seem fair, Kid?”
    I did some quick addition in my head. When you figured in my share of Yasmine’s tips, my pay for the past week came to about a hundred bucks. No taxes taken out either, since Ann was doing everything under the table. Even back home, when I had an after-school job for a few months at the mall stocking shelves at a Sam Goody’s, I had never made that much. I felt rich.
    “Yeah, that’s cool.”
    I gave Ann a big smile, but the one she gave back was kinda lame. I got worried.
    “Anything the matter? Is it the money? Can you really afford to pay me and Sid?”
    Ann tucked some loose hair behind her ear. I noticed a streak of gray mixed in with the brown. “Well, more or less. You two have been invaluable around here the last week. Deer Park is looking better than ever. Yasmine’s not bitching so much about being overworked. Even Angie smiles once in a while. But business is flat, and I was basically just scraping by even before I added you and Sid to the payroll. I don’t mind though, because the difference between paying you guys and not paying you doesn’t really represent much of a margin. If I ever decide to close this place, my decision won’t hinge on what I spend on the help. It’s the costs like electricity and propane and food and gasoline, unavoidable stuff that keeps going up and up, that are going to kill me.”
    This was more information than I really wanted. I wondered if this was the kind of boring thing Ann and Sid talked about each night, when Sid hung out with Ann on the couch in the front office of the lodge, with a crappy old black-and-white Radio Shack tv filling the time between guests showing up. After that first night, when Sid came back to the trailer so late and a little grumpy, and I had thought he was maybe screwing Ann, I had changed my mind about what they were up to. Sid didn’t seem boastful