Unconventional

“That’s my side then,” I declared. “From now on.”

Chase laughed, and I had to laugh with him. If you couldn’t laugh a little in a situation like this, you were pretty fucked.

“You want the good news or the bad news?”

“Gimmie the good,” Chase said.

“They didn’t shit in the toilet tank this time. I checked.”

My friend chuckled, and the couch shook beneath us. We’d need a new one for sure. It was on its last legs even before this last round of vandalization.

“And the bad?”

I pointed gravely. Chase followed along, and when he sa

w the gaping hole where our air-conditioning unit should be, his shoulders dropped.

“FUCK,” he groaned, totally disheartened. “We’re back to fans then.”

“Nah. They smashed those too.”

This summer had been especially brutal. Without some measure of air conditioning in the trailer, we were pretty much dead.

“At least we’ll have a cross-breeze,” I said, pointing to our opposing broken windows. But my latest joke fell flat. We were all out of merriment at our own expense.

We stared forward at our broken television for a few long moments, wishing our glasses of tepid tap water were cold bottles of beer. Finally I asked again.

“How much, Chase?”

Five seconds of silence went by. When my roommate finally spoke, the answer was sullen. Defeated.

“At least three large.”

I couldn’t hide my disappointment. “Three thousand pounds?”

“I owe fifty-five. Killian wants more than half… or this keeps happening.”

Chase was a great guy. Funny, savvy, street-smart as they came. We’d clicked instantly as friends, ever since our time as deckhands on the freighter that brought us over here. But Chase had a gambling problem. A big one, too.

Emphasis on the word had.

I’d broken him of it, just as I’d broken his jaw. He’d dislocated my shoulder in the process, but our drunken brawl — resulting from the last time this happened — eventually had him seeing the light.

“Why are they doing this?” I gestured. “I thought you came to an agreem—”

“I did,” he interrupted. “I was making regular payments, including the forty-percent vig.”

“FORTY PERCENT—”

“Look, it kept them out of here, right? It kept them off of me.” He shrugged. “But now I missed one. And Killian said if I missed even one payment this time, that was it.”

Madison. I should’ve known. Not having a paycheck meant not being able to make payments.

We’d spent all of today at a local farm, relocating a large shed. Stripping it all the way down to the studs, moving the base, and then rebuilding it again. It was shit work, but it paid in cash. And unlike the stuff we were doing at the castle, at least it paid.

“You should’ve told me,” I said angrily. “You could’ve asked for help.”

“Why?” Chase blurted. “Did you have it?”