Authors: Michael Nava
Howtown (33 page)
“It works both ways, Joshua.”
“I’d like to think so, Henry,” he said, the sentence drifting off. “I need something else now.”
“Josh, I can change.”
His eyes filled with tears. “This isn’t easy for me.”
“Give me a chance,” I said. “Look, if the problem is me, let me try to do something about it. I’ll see a therapist.”
“The problem isn’t you,” he said. “The problem is that I’m dying.”
“You’re not dying, Josh.”
He wiped his face on his sleeve. “Just because I’m not sick right now doesn’t mean I’m all right.”
“You are all right.”
He sighed. “Go see your therapist, Henry. It can’t hurt, but I need some time to myself. I’m going to be staying with my parents for awhile.”
“All right,” I said, “as long as it doesn’t mean you’re going for good. It doesn’t, does it?”
He shook his head. “We’ll talk. I want to go home, now, and get some things.” He stood up, and lay his hand on my face. “I wish this wasn’t happening.”
“Nothing’s happened, yet,” I said.
After he left, I sat at my desk and everything that I’d kept at bay while we were talking washed over me, wave after wave of memory, grief, regret, while I told myself it wasn’t over yet. When I trusted myself to talk, I called Raymond Reynolds.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1990 by Michael Nava
cover design by Angela Goddard
978-1-4532-9773-5
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media
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