The Prince and I - 11

“This is wicked,” Connor exclaimed as he counted the change he’d gotten from passers-by. Then he frowned. “That is the right word isn’t it?”

“Depends. If you mean ‘evil’ or ‘bad’, no. If you mean it’s great you made so much then yes it is.”

He nodded. “I heard some guys at Boots using it that way. I mean the good way. I liked how it sounded.”

“Come on surely you heard it in school.”

“I had a tutor and he never let me use slang.”

That had me frowning though I wiped it away quickly. One of the pictures of him showed him in a school uniform, or at least I figured that’s what it was. There was some sort of emblem on the jacket pocket. “La-di-dah,” I commented, chuckling. “Spoiled rotten brat huh? No wonder you don’t know much about living rough.”

He looked embarrassed as he turned away. “I wasn’t spoiled. My… father though I should receive the best education possible is all.”

The slight pause before he said ‘father’ was puzzling. I kicked one foot back and leaned against the wall behind us, asking casually, “Was that why you ran, because he made you do things like that and you didn’t want to?”

He worried his lip. “Partly I suppose. He was very, umm, controlling while we were here. I got tired of it. I wanted to see how real people lived.”

I broke out laughing. “So you decided spending your time trying to keep it together on the streets was the way to do it.”

“It lets me watch people,” he replied defensively. “All sorts of people.”

“That’s for sure, and when you’ve been at it for a while you learn which ones will part with some change and which ones would just as soon you were anywhere else so they didn’t have to see you.”

Just then two women came out of the restaurant and proved my point. One of them looked pityingly at Connor before handing him a dollar. The other one sniffed and I heard her say loudly as they walked away, “You shouldn’t encourage them. They’ll just spend it on drugs. You know how these street bums are.”  

“See, told you.” I pushed off the wall. “Let’s get moving, lunch hour’s over.”

Connor stuffed the dollar in his pocket. “Where are we going now?”

That was a good question. If we’d been downtown I’d have just moved on to another spot, probably by a coffee shop. Here the options were limited. We’d been lucky no one had made us move from where we’d stationed ourselves. I chalked that up to Connor. He really looked like he was dying of hunger and lack of sleep. Me, I looked like what I was, a guy who knew the score. As far as most people in this area were concerned they probably thought my next stop would be trying to break into their houses while they weren’t around to find something to sell to buy drugs.

“How ‘bout we go to the park by the creek. There’s benches and you can watch the rich people go in and out of the mall across the street.” As always, it seemed he had to give the idea a lot of serious thought. “Do you ever just do something on impulse,” I finally asked.

He looked at me, his green eyes sparkling suddenly. “Sometimes, which is why I’m here.” He started walking down the street away from me. When I asked where he was going he said, “To the park.”

“Wrong way.”

“Oh.” He spun around, walking past me. “You coming,” he called over his shoulder.

“Damn. Yeah, yeah, I’m coming.”