Free Stay with Me by Paul Griffin Page A

for the crossword. I don’t mind the Too’s radio, because with a satellite there’s no chance of static. Either you get a perfect clear signal, or you get nothing, which is the way it should be.
    Vic flips his laptop to me and explains how the bank and the bills work, and how you need to pay them on time but not too early either.
    I’m nodding, but looking at the screen gives me a headache. All those words and numbers and click on this word and drag that one to there and type that number. I want to ask Vic to slow it down a little, give me a chance to catch up, but when I used to do that in school, they called me retard.
    “You getting this?” Vic says.
    “Absolutely,” I say.
    “You need to know this stuff.”
    “Why?”
    “This dog training thing. Tony told me about it. You need to do it.”
    “I’m doing it,” I say.
    “Professionally. The school. The certificate. I looked into it. Ey, look at me. I wouldn’t tell you to do it unless I was sure. I’m giving you the money. You pay me back when you can. I made calls to dog trainers on the east side. After you have the certificate, you can make between fifty and a hundred an hour.”
    “I heard that.”
    “You don’t look too excited,” he says. “You’re making eight dollars an hour now. What am I missing?”
    “I can’t see anybody giving me fifty an hour for anything legal.”
    “When does the next training class start?”
    “Fall.”
    “Perfect. Done.”
    “Look, Mister Vic, I don’t mean to be a contraindication, but I’m too young to start a business like that, all professional. Hell, I’m but fifteen.”
    “You’re fifty, not fifteen, and don’t forget it. Fun is important, but so is work. Kid, no matter how much money you make, you can never have enough. You miss a chance to work, you never get it back. You’re going to the school.”
    “I’m a little confused here. Are you, like, firing me?”
    “The restaurant business, people come and go. I try to help them, but usually the person can’t get it together, and they move on, and that’s okay. Once in a while, you get somebody like Carmella, and you see she has to stay. You work for me, you need to have a dream. Carmella’s is making people smile. She can get that here. Tony too. He could be CEO of a multinational corporation, but that’s not what he’s meant to do. You watch, he comes back a hero, and then he runs this place.”
    “The hero part, yeah, but the restaurant business? I don’t know. I pegged him for an athlete or president or maybe a teacher-type, the cool kind.”
    “Trust me,” says the guy who lost an entire restaurant in one hand of cards with a woman named Hammerhead. “Tony’s like his mother, has to see the joy face-to-face. He needs to be here.” He taps the bar top hard and twice. “But for you, this job is to help you for the next one. It’ll kill me to lose you, but by the time you turn eighteen, if you’re still working here, yeah, I’ll can you. Working here is too safe for you. You’re like me, a gambler.”
    “If I’m like you, then I should stay working here.”
    “Dog training. That’s what you’re made for.”
    I don’t get it, what these folks see in me. “What about Céce? What’s her future?”
    Vic’s eyebrows go up with a smile. “Céce has maybe the most special thing of all coming her way.”
    “And what’s that?”
    Vic nods and smiles with his eyebrows up and says, “I know what I know,” and I have no idea what the old man means half the time.
    “The school,” I say. “If I do it, I have my own money saved.”
    “Even better. Kid, just do exactly as I say, and you’ll be fine. And do yourself a favor and look up the word contraindication .”
    “Céce used it the other day.”
    “Not like that she didn’t. C’mon, let’s get the food into the car.”
     
    Vic drives slow and whistles “God Bless America” over and over. Mrs. V. is on the phone with Céce. “Relax, sister, we’ll be there in five