Severance

I

The hotel lobby was filled with the cloudy babel of morning people dressed in bright colors. My eyes darted across the room like lightning, captured by Robyn, a slim-framed lightning rod. He was sprawled across the tacky red couch beside the automatic doors.

His absent pale-green eyes navigated to mine. They stared flatly in my direction as I sluggishly made my way toward him.

"Been a while, huh?" I said, taking a seat on a similar one-seater across from him.

"Sure," he responded apathetically.

I smiled weakly without showing my teeth. I gestured toward an unwieldy backpack that rested beside the couch. "What's in it?"

He sipped on a half-full bottle of cola and sighed deeply. He glanced at me and then opened his mouth to speak. "Let's get out of here, Joiner," he said, wearing a smirk.

"I already ate," I lied.

"We'll stop by Meyer's."

"It's 7 AM," I complained, remembering how tired I was. Speaking to an old friend I haven't seen in months must have made me forget. He didn't seem to care, but I know he did. We're brothers and have been since he was ten and I was nine. Now it's November about a decade later, and he's twenty and I'm eighteen.

"Coke's half empty. I need some cigs, too. You gonna come or not?" I knew he wasn't asking. I stood up, sighing in inevitably futile protest.

"It's sweet cancer, Rob. The stuff's bad for you." I pocketed my phone and two fives that I had been clutching in my left hand.

"You're right, but we all die some day," he expounded not at all pessimistically as we began to leave. Briefly, we traded glances, and he laughed to assure that he was joking. My legs were sore, but I walked it off. Maria, a small, kindly Mexican clerk who had checked me in last night, waved at me with a brittle smile.