He turned the car off

First of the month I take my mom's money down to Cedar. It's been me since I was sixteen because my sisters can't hold a number in their head and my mom won't do it in English even though she can. She counts it out on the table, counts it again, then she says the amount out loud and I say it back to her.

March it was three hundred and eighty. Some months it's four hundred if she picked up a Saturday. She does housekeeping at one of the hotels out by the airport and she rides with a lady from the second floor.

So the shop's on Cedar, it's got the phone cards by the door and then the glass with the counter behind it. I have to duck coming in. Like I don't know if the frame's low or the floor's built up or what, but I duck. The way it works is you hand him the cash and the number you're sending to, he types it, and it's there before you get home. Like actually before you get home, that's not me exaggerating.

Under five hundred the fee is eight dollars. Over five hundred it goes to twelve, so if she ever had six I'd just do two of them, he's told me I can do that. That day the rate was 129.40 to the dollar. In February it was 128 something and my mom noticed. She checks it.

It goes to my mom's older sister in Eastleigh. She's the one who splits it up. School fees for two of my cousins and then the rest is the rent on the stall, and my aunt puts her own money in on top of ours but she won't say how much. That's the only counter my mom will use. There's one on Franklin but it takes two days.

Anyway, March first was a Sunday and it was raining on top of the old snow, that gray stuff with all the grit in it, and I didn't have a real jacket on, I don't know, I never do. He did my transaction and then he went and locked the front while I was still standing there. Didn't put a sign up or anything. Just locked it.

He said he'd run me home. I said it's six blocks. He said yeah.

His car's a silver Camry with one of those little pine tree things on the mirror, and when I came out the passenger seat was already all the way back. I got in and my knees still hit but they hit less.

Six blocks is nothing. It's ninety seconds if you catch the light on Riverside. He pulled into the lot by the dumpsters where the bus can't box you in and put it in park. Keys went in the cup holder and the fan quit.

He started telling me about a Mercury Grand Marquis he used to have. Maroon, an 03, he bought it in Columbus for fourteen hundred off a guy who ran a car wash. It had 130 on it when he got it and he put another ninety on it himself, which is, I mean for a car like that it's a lot.

He drove it to Seattle one time for his wife's cousin's wedding and the AC died outside Bozeman, so they had the windows down through all of Montana, and his brother-in-law's hat came off somewhere past Billings. He kept going back to the hat.

There was a tape stuck in the deck. Some old singer, he said the name and I didn't know it. So every time he started that car for about a year it was the same song from the beginning, and he said by the end he didn't want it fixed anymore.

He asked me how long I'd been bringing the money in. I said since I was sixteen. Then he went back to the car.

He sold it for six hundred to a guy who gave him four and said he'd bring the rest. That guy still comes in the shop. Sends to Hargeisa on the fifteenth. He said he runs it for him same as anybody and he's never once brought it up and he's not going to.

My phone went at 6:40, which was my mom, and I pushed the button on the side so it went dark. He didn't look over at it.

The windows were fogged by then. You couldn't see my building from in there and my building's right there.

Every man over about fifty in that neighborhood asks me if I play. At the bus stop, in the store. I used to say no thanks or whatever and now I just keep walking.

6:53 he said alright and I got out and my back went cold right away from the rain.

My aunt sleeps in the front room with the TV going, one of those Turkish shows they dub, and she doesn't wake up for anything. My mom was up. She's up on the first.

I gave her the yellow copy with the reference on it and she read the six numbers out to her sister. Nairobi's nine hours ahead so it was the middle of the night over there and my aunt was awake anyway because she's always awake. I didn't say about the ride.

Then it was just the month. I do overnights at the Cub, dairy load comes in around two and if the milk isn't faced by four the morning guy makes it your whole problem. Class at Normandale at ten twenty and I sleep on the 515 both directions.

I walked past the shop a couple times at night coming off the bus. Closed both times. It closes at six, so that's nothing, I'm just saying I walked past it.

April first I went at four thirty instead of six. I had a gap between classes so.

Two guys ahead of me and one of them was, anyway. Rate was 128.90 so my mom's four hundred came out worse than March. Fee was still eight. He ran the bills through the counter twice like he does with everybody.

He asked was I still on nights. I said yeah. He said that'll mess you up, and then he printed the slip and slid it under the glass and said the reference out loud the way he does, and the guy behind me moved up.

Going home I cut through the lot and the Camry was in the same spot by the dumpsters. Passenger seat still all the way back.