Things I’ll Never Say by Ann Angel Page A

things that might put people off.”
    â€œOh, you know I don’t mean it like that.”
    â€œYeah, but I’m not sure
my
knowing that is much good to you.”
    I have my head down, examining the phones, when I feel his big paw on my neck. I look up to see his earnest mug right close to mine. “Of course it is,” he says, and nods it into me like hammering a spike in deep. “You knowing that I’m all right is a whole lot of good to me. Some days it’s everything.”
    I nod back at him, a little sad, a little proud, a little uneasy. I look back down at the counter while he still holds on to my neck. I’ve narrowed my selection down to two phones that are both, as promised, a couple of grades above the one I had. “Can’t decide,” I say, holding the two of them.
    He lets go of me and sweeps the rest of the phones away. “Ah, what the hell,” he says. “Have ’em both. They’re all charged up, got working sims with at least a few bucks in ’em.”
    I laugh as he digs around in another drawer and pulls out a dark sea monster of tangled phone chargers. “But you’ll have to sort this out for yourself,” he says.
    The door snaps open, and a tall surfer type with his hair in long black braids says a loud “Yo” to Charlie as he heads straight for the counter. I’ve seen the guy a few times before. He smells of dope and has some kind of arrangement with Bread & Waters that I enjoy not knowing anything about.
    â€œI was just going anyway,” I say, catching the door before it closes.
    I get on my bike and start riding. I’m not sure where I’m going because I have three distinct destinations in my head at the same time with no clear winner yet. My room, just because it’s my room. The rotting old dock close to the official ferry berth, because it’s the very spot that puts together the whole of Lundy Lee — the sea and the ship engine aroma and the spores of whatever history wafting right up out of the ancient pier wood — and vaporizes it for me to inhale. Crabbit Café, because I can.
    I reach the intersection where a decision must be made, and so I make one. I hop off the bike and start walking it, left. That eliminates just the café and so doesn’t quite make it a decision. Until I slow down to a sluggish shuffle just as I pass the North Star Bar. I squint and strain to see inside. The afternoon crowd is changing over to the evening shift, which means more motion inside and a little louder but nothing that seems like it would be anything of interest to me as I continue on and continue minding my own business.
    Until another twenty yards along, I pass the Compass Inn and slow down again. There is cranky music coming from inside, which I think is the same song I always hear coming out of the place. The ferry blows a long horn blast as I swing my leg over the bike.
    â€œHey,” she calls, and in one motion I throw the other leg over so that all of me stands on the opposite side of the bike like I hurdled it. I couldn’t explain that move even to myself, so I put my hand casually on my hip instead and hope we can just let it pass.
    â€œNice,” she says. “Now, if you could do it while spinning a lasso at the same time, you’ll have a real act.”
    â€œThanks. I wasn’t looking for you; I just happened to be going past.”
    She has her phone out. “Okay, fine, Warren. But can you explain what this is about?” She turns the screen and its message to face me:
I have not been able to stop picturing what our children will look like.
    The freak couldn’t even manage to say
would
look like instead of
will.
    â€œOh, Christ. Okay, that is not my fault.”
    â€œOf course not. This is Lundy Lee, after all. Go on, blame it on your father and his penis — I dare you.”
    I do nothing of the kind. I do no thing of any kind. That same music plays,