Free Hypocrisy by Daniel Annechino Page B

rested his chin on folded hands. “Okay, you made your point. I owe you another drink.”
    No way could Dupree deal with drink number four. “I’ll take a rain check on that, thank you.”
    “Come on,” T.J. taunted. “You can handle one more.”
    She’d parked her car in the underground garage in her apartment building, and she and T.J. had walked to Wicked Willy’s in the Village. So having to drive wasn’t an issue for Dupree. However, the compelling question was whether or not she could walk back to her apartment without stumbling like a brown-bagjuicehead. But in spite of the alarm going off in her brain, she abandoned her common sense.
    “Okay. One more and I mean it.”
    “You order for both of us. I need to make a little trip.” T.J. excused himself and weaved his way through the crowd toward the bathroom.
    While waiting for T.J. to return, Dupree studied the bustling crowd, disappointed at herself that she would go against the grain of her strong feelings, sit in this meat market with T.J., and drink herself into oblivion. Fifteen years ago, yes. But that was another life; one she’d tried to forget. What was she trying to prove?
    T.J. returned promptly and his beer was waiting for him. “So, partner, now that you’ve made your point and proven that I know nothing about you personally, isn’t it time I get to know the real Amaris Dupree?”
    “Only if I get to know the real Theodore Jamal Brown.”
    “Deal.”
    “One condition,” Dupree said. “If we’re going to share life stories, no holding back or filtering. Balls to the walls or nothing.”
    “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” T.J. said.
    Dupree had never shared her dark and dubious life story with anyone. Bits and pieces to select people, yes, but never the unabridged version. Maybe speaking the words to another human being would actually be good therapy.
    “My saga is a not-so-uncommon story,” Dupree said. “Good kid gone bad. My dad left my mother and me when I was only three years old. Never saw him again. Mom did a great job of managing the household and teaching me strong values. We lived in a beautiful red brick home in Brooklyn. I wasn’t a bad kid, but something happened when I reached my teens. It was as if some demon possessed me on my thirteenth birthday.” Dupree paused and took a sip of her drink. “How my mother dealt with me without sending me to a boot camp for out-of-control kids isstill a mystery.” She paused for a few seconds, not sure she should continue. But the numbing effect of the alcohol was making her feel uninhibited. T.J. seemed to recognize the awkwardness of the situation, but didn’t utter a sound. She noticed that he hadn’t taken his eyes off her face.
    “Well,” Dupree continued. “Things heated up just before my seventeenth birthday. My mother and I were at odds every single day. So, I did the only logical thing. I got pregnant by my drug-dealing, pot-smoking, loser boyfriend, left my mother high and dry, and moved in with the father of my baby. We lived in a slummy apartment in the projects and ate food you wouldn’t feed to a hyena. But I never got into the drug scene. Somehow, I found the strength to stay clean. My boyfriend begged, pleaded for me to have an abortion. That’s when I knew he and I had no future together. No way was I going to kill my baby.
    “There I was, not even seventeen years old, out in the streets with all my worldly belongings stuffed in a backpack, a three month old baby in my womb, and thirty-five dollars in my pocket. I thought about going home, feeling certain that my mother would have taken me in without a second thought. But I was too proud and too foolish to do the right thing.”
    Dupree’s eyes began to gloss over.
    “You don’t have to continue, Amaris. Really.”
    “I’ve come this far. Besides,” she forced a smile, “think you’re getting off the hook so easily? When I’m finished, it’ll be your turn.”
    “I lived in the streets for