Page 80 of Baker

I’d wanted to ask for a long time, but I hadn’t. I reached a point that curiosity got the best of me, though. “Why don’t you ever take off your shirt?”

He pulled back the comforter. “Let’s say there’s something underneath there I’m not quite ready for you to see.”

He’d seen me from the inside out. I took offense to the statement. “A scar?” I asked.

He climbed onto the bed. “No.”

“A tattoo of your former lover?” I asked jokingly.

“Close, but no.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “What?”

“You’ll find out some day.”

“When?”

He patted his hand against the bed. “When I’m ready.”

He turned out the lights, but left the blinds open, allowing the light from the street to filter into the room. The same cool blue glow that filled my home at night filled his.

I got in bed beside him, not angry, but not as happy as I’d been during our music session. I played the pouty role for a few minutes, but it did little good. About the time I decided to accept his decision to tell me when he was ready, he repositioned himself.

“Lay your head here.” He placed his palm on his shoulder.

I did as he asked, scooting so close to him that every inch of me that was able to be was touching an inch of him. He searched the top of the nightstand blindly, and eventually lifted something. Then, music began to play softly in the background.

“My playlist,” he said. “It’ll play for an hour. Is that alright?”

I couldn’t fall asleep without music. I tilted my head to the side and smiled. “It’s perfect.”

I guessed we weren’t going to have sex, and I liked it that he hadn’t tried or suggested it. I closed my eyes and let his choice of music entertain me while I considered what a life with a man in it would be like.

The Wind, by Amos Lee started playing.

My eyes opened. It was the song that played the night he hugged me in front of my door. For me, it was a turning point. I wondered if it was for him, too. Before I had a chance to mention the song, and how I would always associate it with that night, he rolled his head to the side and kissed me.

“Good night, Andy,” he said.

“Goodnight, Baker.”

I closed my eyes and grinned. When the song stopped, I decided when Helen grew up, I’d want her to meet someone like Baker.

Just like Baker.

THIRTY-FOUR - Baker

My mother and father were killed before I could walk. He was a small-time crook and wannabe bank robber who couldn’t plan dinner, let alone a bank heist. Holed up in a motel in New Mexico after a botched bank job, he decided to try his luck in a shootout with the FBI.

He soon found out his marksmanship skills and his ability to rob a bank were comparable. When the room was searched, they found the two of them on the floor. His archaic revolver, a half-eaten bag of Doritos, a few empty bottles of malt liquor, two thousand dollars, and a gram of heroin were scattered about the filthy room.

When their bullet-riddled bodies were laid to rest, I was in Montana, developing a palate for Malt-O-Meal. No one cried, no one cared, and no one attended the funeral. My first birthday was celebrated three months later with a big bowl of home-made ice cream and a two-layer white cake with chocolate fudge frosting.

When I was a kid, I wondered if I was destined to follow in his footsteps. As I grew older, I learned there were no genes for intelligence, and that the mutations that lower intelligence in mankind were non-specific, and idiosyncratic.

In short, my father was one of a kind.

Consequently, so was I.