“You’re a stupid motherfucker!” David said, and squirmed off of Alan’s lap.
The vice principal’s lips tightened. “Alan,” he said quietly, “take your brother into the hallway. I am going to write a note that your mother will have to sign before David comes back to school, after his two-week suspension.”
David glared at them each in turn. “I’m not coming back to this motherfucker place!” he said.
He didn’t.
The rain let up by afternoon, leaving a crystalline, fresh-mown air hanging over the Market.
Andrew sat in his office by his laptop and watched the sun come out. He needed to find Ed, needed to find Frank, needed to find Grant, but he was out of practice when it came to the ways of the mountain and its sons. Whenever he tried to imagine a thing to do next, his mind spun and the worldless howling thing inside him stirred. The more he tried to remember what it was like to be a son of the mountain, the more he felt something he’d worked very hard for, his delicate normalcy, slipping away.
So he put his soaked clothes in the dryer, clamped his laptop under his arm, and went out. He moped around the park and the fountain, but the stroller moms whose tots were splashing in the wading pool gave him sufficient dirty looks that he walked up to the Greek’s, took a table on the patio, and ordered a murderously strong cup of coffee.
He opened up the screen and rotated around the little café table until the screen was in the shade and his wireless card was aligned for best reception from the yagi antenna poking out of his back window. He opened up a browser and hit MapQuest, then brought up a street-detailed map of the Market. He pasted it into his CAD app and started to mark it up, noting all the different approaches to his house that Davey might take the next time he came. The maps soothed him, made him feel like a part of the known world.
Augusta Avenue and Oxford were both out; even after midnight, when the stores were all shuttered, there was far too much foot traffic for Davey to pass by unnoticed. But the alleys that mazed the back ways were ideal. Some were fenced off, some were too narrow to pass, but most of them—he’d tried to navigate them by bicycle once and found himself utterly lost. He’d had to turn around slowly until he spotted the CN Tower and use it to get his bearings.