Bait Dog An Atlanta Burns Novel - By Chuck Wendig Page 0,3
zipper off the frozen dinner, she still sees him out there. He’s no longer looking in the window, but he’s on the back lawn by the rusted patio furniture. Pacing.
Fuck it. She ignores him. Perforates the plastic with a fork. Dinner in the microwave. She cracks the beer and takes a sip and makes a face, then dumps it in the sink. It’s not skunked, but it might as well be.
The kid knocks at the back door. Moon face peering past floral curtains.
“Piss off,” she says. “Don’t want any. Already have plenty. You’re welcome. Scram.”
That worked. When next she looks to the door and window, the kid is gone.
Five minutes later she’s eating bad General Tso’s chicken, each nugget so nasty she half-imagines that each is some kind of forbidden testicle meat, breaded and deep-fried and dipped in spicy ketchup.
And of course here comes the smell of gunsmoke again and suddenly she’s reveling in just how ridiculous it is that everything can make her think of that.
Door to the garage opens up. Mom comes in.
“Hon?” she asks. Atlanta’s about to tell her mother, no, thank you, I said I got dinner covered so you go on back to your garage now, but instead her Mom beats her to the punch with: “I think a friend’s here to see you.”
Atlanta’s about to protest but it’s too late. Mom’s already letting the Latino kid with the oil-slick hair and the round acorn-storing cheeks in the door.
Mom waves like she did something nice, like this earns her credit or karma or something, and then she again vanishes quicker than a lake monster.
Latino Charlie Brown doesn’t say anything.
They stare at each other in the cramped kitchen.
Finally: “You want a TV dinner or something?”
He nods. “Okay.”
She goes and gets him something that looks (but probably doesn’t taste) like lasagna.
* * *
They’re watching one of those gavel-banging shows on cable. Blah blah blah. Dog bit my leg. Bitch dinged my car. Deadbeat won’t pay for a paternity test.
The couch has as much give in the cushions as a body with rigor mortis, so it’s not all that comfortable, but what’s even less comfortable is the space between the two of them.
She hands him the remote. “You want to watch something else?”
“Nah.” He pauses. “Well. I do like the Food Network.”
“This is basic cable. We don’t get the Food Network.” She blinks. “You watch the Food Network?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like to cook?”
“Yes.”
“That lasagna you’re eating then probably tastes pretty dang bad. Like tomato paste pressed between layers of shoe leather or something.”
He puckers his lips. “I wasn’t going to say anything.”
“Let’s go back to the kitchen. You’re going to cook me dinner for saving your tail today. It was either this or an appetizer of dog-shit poppers. C’mon.”
* * *
She can’t lie. It’s the best grilled cheese sandwich she’s ever had. Has a good crunch but isn’t burned. Soft in the middle. A little sweet, too. She tells him so as they sit at the rickety card table that serves as a dinner table.
“The secret is cook it low and slow over an iron skillet,” he says like he’s been practicing saying this for his own food show someday. He even waves his hands around, gesticulating like he’s on-camera. “If you had Brie cheese, I’d make it with that. That’s the best way.”
“Brie. That ain’t a cheap cheese, is it? Sounds French.”
“It is French. And no. I guess not.”
“Your family can afford Brie?”
“Well. No.”
“You ever eaten Brie cheese?”
He hesitates. “…No, not exactly.”
“Whatever. This is a good sandwich whether it has cheese made by French surrender monkeys or not.”
“You know that’s a myth. That the French were all cowards. The French Resistance was instrumental in helping America win the war.”
She just shrugs, keeps eating her sandwich.
“I put a thin layer of mustard in the middle,” he says.
“Ish sho good.”
They sit and chew.
She says, finally, “I figured you’d make, y’know, Mexican food or something. A chalupa.”
“A chalupa.” Blink, blink.
“Yeah. Why? Is that racist or something?”
He thinks about it. “No, I suppose not.” Though the look on his face says he’s not so sure. Atlanta figures if that’s the kind of racist she is, so be it. Last year, they found a dead Guatemalan kid under the bushes ringing the water tower at the edge of town. Beaten and kicked. Story goes that it was because he was dating a white girl. Atlanta doesn’t truck with that kind of racism. She thinks people deserve whatever niceness they can squeeze out of