My Favourite Part

16: a good man

The Life and Times of Walt Rogers, summarised:

For one, his name wasn't Walt Rogers. He'd been born under a cruder name of Gaelic roots, after a baseball player that nobody his age had heard of. Duane. Like Josephson? Some Red Sox catcher my dad liked. They called him DT in kindergarten, and that stuck much better, to his father's chagrin.

He didn't have a trade, as such. He'd been smart in his school days, sharp as a tack when he tries his teachers had said, but nothing much had come of it. Thinking was easy, but school was hard, so when his father made him and his brother, Jerome, glorified gunmen in his New York drug cartel, Duane had quickly taken to the role, shrugging into the violence and vanity like a well-fitting hand-me-down.

As sudden as if it had happened whilst he was bent down to tie his shoelace, Duane woke up one day afraid to think. To think meant to dwell, and to dwell meant to be disgusted by what he had let himself become; a man who could smile at a baby, knowing he'd pistol-whipped his dopehead dad because he didn't pay up; a man who could look himself in the mirror and go about his day as though the only thing wrong was him was his slightly crooked nose; a man who could let his little brother take the rap, 19 long years behind bars, for a bullet that he had fired. Duane wasn't a man; he was a boy – but he purposed in his heart... one day, I'll be a real man. The kind of man that his mother, bless her bottle-blonde soul, prayed he would be when she bought him a one-way ticket to the last place his small-town father would think to look for him. Go be a good man, DT. Like... Bill Clinton... or Mr. Rogers!

DT chose the latter. And as it happened, he found a gap in a semi-detached in Aldwych, that seemed just the right size for one Walt Rogers.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

You ever known somebody, and thought you knew them better than they knew themselves, when in fact you didn't know them at all, so they tell you over tabbouleh and tahini, after a prayer that you didn't know they knew, that 80% of what you know about them is a lie? It's an awkward situation, would not recommend.

There was a little silence, at first... then August asked what part of New York he was from, and there hasn't been a second of it since.

Mum hasn't spoken in eleven minutes by my count, but Auggie hasn't stopped. She seems so comfortable you'd think she was interviewing old mates. John Wick or Vincent Vega? Did you guys always work together? What was it like? Were you, like... rich?

It's almost like she's unaware that depending on how, or frankly if, Mum reacts to all of this, everything could be falling apart.

Although, without the distraction of August's jabbering, I can't say for certain that Mum wouldn't have already launched herself across the table or collapsed into a pile on the floor. I suppose I'm grateful, in that regard.

Walt keeps looking at over at Mum before he answers one of Auggie's probing questions, like he's checking for her permission or seeing whether it's finally happening and she's about to chuck a flute of wine at him. Either way, she hasn't met any of his glances yet. Or mine.

She is looking at him, just never at the same time he's looking at her. If looks could kill, I reckon he'd still be alive. She doesn't look furious, or even confused; she's gnawing on the inside of her cheek, with the faintest look of abstraction, like she's thinking about where she left her car keys. Except for when Walt looks over; then her gaze snaps to anywhere he's not.

"Okay so," August starts again, pointing her hummus-covered fork at Jerome, "when Angie came into the shop, did you know who she was?"

"Yup," Jerome says without missing a beat, "well," he tilts his head in thought, while stretching his mouth about to fish something out his teeth with tongue, and all I can wonder is how is this guy related to Mr. Rogers?