Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3
E lijah. Sunday
I had a really great apartment. I could afford to live in the best building in town, and I did. I had everything I needed, right where I lived — and at the moment, I couldn’t stand to stay there.
I was too restless, knowing that soon Kane would be back in town, bringing with him the memory of everything about myself that I’d wanted to get away from. I’d worked hard to reinvent myself, to become Elijah Bennett 2.0. But, I was dead certain that Kane Marcus was still the original model he’d been when we last saw each other. I’d have to contend with him still being who he was and expecting me to be the guy I wasn’t any more.
Which was what brought me from my own place to my sister Sarah’s house, where I plopped down, anxious and frustrated, on her living room couch.
Sarah was just about to begin dusting the living room when I arrived. She had a rag in one hand and a can of Pledge in the other. My sister was always good at reading my moods, but just then, she didn’t need to be. She could have been blind and deaf and known that I was stewing over something. Which brought her to the obvious question, “Okay, what is it?”
Before I answered her, I glanced around to make sure my brother-in-law and business partner, Leo, wasn’t within earshot. Wherever she was at a given moment, he was liable to be not far away. Not that I wanted to keep secrets from my partner, but I wanted whatever conversation was about to unspool in their living room to be just between my sister and me.
Satisfying myself that Leo wasn’t around, I still leaned forward confidentially out of instinct to answer Sarah. “Kane has been in touch,” I told her gravely. “He says he’s moving back.”
She went into a blank expression, set down the rag and the Pledge on the coffee table, and sank into a chair facing me. “Kane? Coming back here? Really?”
“I know,” I said, shaking my head. “Like I really needed him now.”
“Like you ever needed him at all, ” said Sarah in a pained voice. She might as well have been our father. I could hear in my head the same reaction in Dad’s voice. I did not look forward to Dad finding this out.
“What are you going to do?” she asked anxiously.
Waving my hand as if the situation were a fly that I could swat away, which I wouldn’t have minded doing with Kane himself, I said, “I don’t know. He says he wants to go out and do something when he gets settled in.”
Sarah shut her eyes dreadfully. “Kane ‘doing something.’ When I think of the kinds of things he does…”
“Tell me about it,” I muttered.
When she opened her eyes again, they were welling up with tears. I hated to think of my sister in pain, and I could see that the memories associated with Kane were actually hurting her. “Elijah, you can’t do that. You can’t let him back into your life. You’ve just gotten everything cleaned up. Don’t let him wreck it, please.”
“I know, I know,” I said, shoulders slumping. “I just don’t know how I’m going to handle him this time. I just wanted to be done with him.”
“And, you will,” said Sarah, reaching out and putting her hand on my knee. “Where there’s dirt, you can wash your hands — and you have to wash your hands of him. We’ll figure something out.”
“Thanks, Sis,” I said. She made me almost believe it was possible. But, Kane was the kind of dirt that made you want to scrub up to your elbows like a surgeon.
_______________
That night, I sat up on my bed, too keyed-up to peel off my clothes and climb between the sheets. The text that I got wouldn’t make it any easier to get to sleep.
It was a group message not only to me, but to some other guys that we used to run with. Kane was putting out feelers to our whole gang, wanting to know who was still in town and who was interested in coming out and reminiscing about old times when he got back.
My blood ran cold at the thought of Kane getting the guys back together. Reminiscing about old times with them could easily lead to trying to relive them. I hadn’t seen a lot of our crew since I started getting my act together. I wondered how many of them had started getting their own acts together.
Kane was the kind of guy that parents called a bad influence, and getting older didn’t make him any less of one. It was easy for me to see him “influencing” them the wrong way, and see myself getting swept up in it if I let him. But, no way was I going to let him.
If I could have done it, I would have put a barricade at the Cincinnati city line saying, KANE MARCUS, KEEP OUT. Not that it would have done any good. Kane, like any roach, was good at finding his way into places.
The imminent return of my old friend and this new message that I didn’t answer sent me from keyed-up to wired- up. No way was I about to be able to crash now, unless I did something to burn off this mood. Bitterly, I got a T-shirt and some sweatpants out of my closet and changed clothes for a run.
It was what Ben always advised. Running was not only good for the old heart and vascular system, it was also good for pushing through a bad mood and clearing out bad feelings, if only temporarily. All I needed to do was get clear enough to get some sleep, which Ben also was always quick to remind me was indispensable.
With every impact of my sneaker-clad feet on the pavement around my neighborhood, I seemed to relive a moment that I’d spent with Kane. They were all moments that I now wished had never happened. If only I could launder my whole life the way I was going to wash what I was now wearing. Kane Marcus, damn him, was a ground-in stain that I would have loved to wash right out of my past.
Doing stupid things is part of being young, I tried to reassure myself. To which I couldn’t help adding, but, did I have to be that stupid?
_______________
I was sweaty and tired when I got home, ready to get a shower and dive into bed — but Kane, like that ground-in dirt I’d been thinking about, was still staining my thoughts as stubbornly as ever.
Gritting my teeth, I took my phone and did some research, bringing up his name and cross-referencing with recent police records. The facts of his recent life that were on public file jumped out at me. My old buddy was still running true to form. There had been arrests, court dates, stays in police lockups — not in actual prisons, but he’d still been behind bars not long ago and that was enough to tell me he was still as much trouble as he’d ever been.
Tossing the phone onto the bed, I growled, “Great. Just great. And now, he’s looking forward to a homecoming.” I peeled off my clothes and stalked like an angry tiger to the bathroom to shower. Kane was not something that I could wash out of my life. Getting clean of him would be a whole different kind of problem.