Pigeon

We’ve taken four new suites.  The better to keep the money and presents from all the lay-down-your-life-for-me hangers-on.  While I stare listlessly at the interminable sky, Carlos and Maggie and a retinue of consultants bicker, prescribing this, proscribing that.  Three RWR bakeries are up and running already, not counting the real bakery, my  home. It’s nowhere near done, and nowhere near recognizable.

[This post is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

On top of which:  The boy Tyler is nowhere to be found.  Carlos, I just discovered, fired Mad Mike and his crew three and a half weeks ago.

“Mad Mike,” Carlos adjusts his Bluetooth earpiece, “is a drug addict.  You think I want a cokehead working the rotary saws?”  Carlos looks like someone from another life now, Carlos as CEO, Carlos in Italian suits.  But he still finds time each day to sidle next to me and whisper, “You can do it,” sometimes adding, “Pigeon.”

Carlos has taken to calling me Pigeon, and I do not deign to notice.

I’ve promised myself to say nothing to him about the boy Tyler.  The less Carlos knows about the soul of concern, sweetness, light, peace, joy, and hope, the better.

(Click here to read the next episode)