Free Earth Angel by Laramie Dunaway Page B

desperation?”
    “Something like that.”
    “No. She sends Christmas cards that include a little family newsletter addressed to ‘Dearest Friends and Family.’ I have no
     idea why I’m on the list, we didn’t exactly end our affair on the best of terms. Her husband found out,threatened to leave her, she asked me what to do. I told her to go back to her husband, she threw my baseball autographed
     by the entire Cubs team through my window. Never did find that ball.” He swung the car into a parking spot behind a brick
     building. The parking space had yellow stenciling: “Reserved for Gotham City. All Others Towed. No Kidding!”
    We got out of the car and I followed Daryl to an alley door which he unlocked and entered, holding the door open for me. We
     walked through a small room with a bunch of stacked cardboard boxes and an old metal desk with papers in neat piles and a
     large calculator. We passed through a beaded curtain, which made me smile. On the other side of the curtain was Gotham City,
     Daryl’s business since dropping out of med school. Four aisles of wooden bins held the used record albums, while floor-to-ceiling
     racks along the walls held the used comic books, each in a plastic bag. A couple of preteens browsed through the comic books.
     A sharply dressed man in his mid-forties flipped through the albums. Available wall space was covered with giant posters of
     Wolverine, the Punisher, the X-Men, the Joker, and others.
    Daryl turned to me. “I ran out of here without leaving the keys so she can lock up.” He nodded toward the young black girl
     behind the counter doing homework. “Just take me a minute and we’re outta here.”
    “Daryl, don’t leave on my account. I appreciate your picking me up and everything. Honest, it was very sweet. But I’m fine.
     I can grab a taxi to a hotel. I’ve got a flight out in the morning anyway.”
    “Just take me a minute,” he said, ignoring my protestations. He went over to the girl, gave her a set of keys. She nodded,
     occasionally stealing glances at me when she thought I wasn’t looking. She was about sixteen, thin and pretty with big eyes
     and dark brown skin. As Darylwalked away from her he said, “Any problems, call me at home.”
    “Yeah, okay,” she said, and I could hear a tick of jealousy in her voice.
    In the car I asked him if he was sleeping with her.
    “Monica?” He seemed surprised. “She’s too old.” He laughed. “Jesus, Season, I didn’t realize you held me in such low esteem.”
    I felt bad. What difference did it make to me who he slept with? I wasn’t the girl’s mother. He goes out of his way to pick
     me up from the police station, never once asks what I was doing there, even though he knows what I told him on the phone is
     bullshit, and I’m climbing up on my mountaintop to judge him. I made me sick.
    “You can drop me off at any hotel, Daryl. A Holiday Inn or something.”
    “I could,” he said. “But I’m taking you home, cooking you a meal, and maybe later Monica will drop by for a wild threesome.”
     He looked over at me, grinning. “I’m kidding about Monica. She’s my niece. My older brother’s a high-school algebra teacher;
     he married his African-American principal; and our family has been a model of interracial harmony ever since. Except my mother
     doesn’t speak to him anymore, and my father divorced my mother because she tried to keep him from visiting his granddaughter.”
    I rolled down the window and inhaled a deep breath of Chicago air. “What’s for dinner?”
    He made his move after dinner. I was half expecting it, since Daryl had always had a little crush on me back in med school.
     He’d never tried anything back then; everyone knew I was unofficially “engaged” to Tim—which meant Tim hadn’t asked me to
     marry him, but it was expected we would stay together and probably marry one day if wegot religion, rich, or decided to have children. That status had been okay with