Through the Cracks by Honey Brown Page B

flicker and tremble.
    ‘Bet you didn’t think you’d see me again this soon.’
    ‘Oh, I thought I might,’ Vern said.

S un streamed in through the window. No blinds to block it. Below, from the café, were clatters and the occasional smash of a plate or cup being dropped; trucks came and went from the alleyway; seagulls squabbled. Adam could hear the bird’s claws scratching and scrambling on the roof. Cars tooted. A woman came to visit Vern and she talked in a loud, demanding voice, walked around in noisy shoes. It was hard to sleep.
    Billy was on the couch. He was only wearing shorts, sleeping on his back, one leg propped on the cushions, the other leg hanging over the side, his arms draped above his head. His chest rose and fell. Sometimes his limbs twitched. Sweat beaded on Adam’s top lip. His lashes were wet with it. Sweat trickled down his neck. He didn’t dare take his trackpants off, or his T-shirt. Not even his sneakers. He sweltered. The mosquito bites had swelled into tight hot lumps. Thoughts of the night turned in his mind, unsettling images, combinations of faces and events, jumbled up and switched about – the barber at the playground, nightclub people queuing in the waves, Scotty and the faceless husky-voiced woman down on the sand. Adam thought about Billy and Vern, what he’d seen them do. At least that slowed the wheeling images – increased Adam’s heartbeats, though, made his blood cold and his sweat turn icy. He shivered.
    ‘He’ll want to paint you.’
    Adam didn’t react. For a moment he wondered if he’d imagined Billy’s voice. He hadn’t realised Billy had woken. He was in the same position but with his head turned Adam’s way, eyes open, watching him.
    ‘You don’t have to. I’m just saying, he’ll ask you. Pay you. He’ll keep offering till you say yes. It’ll be a lot of money for a small thing, just you sitting there. First time it’s a small thing, for a lot of money. Then the things you have to do get bigger and the money gets less.’
    ‘I don’t want to.’
    Billy sniffed and sat up. ‘Fair enough.’ He reached for his smokes. ‘Fuck it’s hot in here.’ After lighting his smoke he got up, took a bottle of Coke from the fridge and sat down with it, swigging between puffs. ‘Want some?’
    ‘No, thank you.’
    ‘It’s just that . . . well, because it’s the first time, we could get it so you could stay dressed, sitting and doing nothing. And for that we could get maybe as much as two hundred bucks.’ Billy squinted and looked towards the window. ‘If you don’t come back again that’s it and that’s as bad as it’s going to get. I’m here so it ain’t gonna go no further.’ Billy wet his lips and dried them with the back of his hand. He sucked hard on the smoke. ‘There are easy ways of getting two hundred bucks and hard ways. I’m saying this would be an easy way. We’d go after that. We don’t have to come back.’
    Adam wiped his face on the shoulder of his T-shirt. ‘I don’t want to.’
    ‘I’m not going to get two hundred bucks for sitting down fully dressed in front of him, I’ll tell you that much. Might be all we need to sort out what it is with you. What your real name is and where you come from.’
    ‘Can’t we just leave?’
    ‘And get that kind of money where? I’m here, he can’t hurt you.’
    ‘Can you take me back to my father’s house?’
    Billy sighed. He capped the Coke and put it back in the fridge. For a while he stood with the door open, smoking and staring across the room. He closed the fridge. ‘Sit tight. Don’t jump out the window or anything. I’ll be five, ten minutes.’
    ‘You’ll take me back after that?’
    Billy stopped at the door. His gaze grew stony. ‘You reckon anyone else would do what I’m about to do and then go shout you a salad roll and a milkshake? You go get some money, be nice enough to share it with me, and then I’m all fucking ears about what you wanna do.’
    ‘I