My Brother’s Keeper - 32

“This is where the two of you have been sleeping?” Tad asked quietly as he followed Roy up to the rooftop.

“Here and on other roofs when we can. Sleeping high is safer as long as there’s a parapet, and like here, some shelter.” He pointed to the small shack that housed the building’s swamp cooler. “That doesn’t work in summer when they’re running it but now it’s safe enough.” When they got to the shack, Roy pried loose one of the grates enough that they could creep inside.

Tad shivered, as much from the idea of spending the night inside the filthy enclosure as from the decided chill in the air. “I guess I’m really spoiled,” he said.

“Naw, no more than most people, but you learn to adapt when you have to. You’ve been doing fine so far.”

Tad wasn’t certain that he had. It was one thing to know intellectually what it took to survive on the streets; it was a whole other thing to put it into practice. At Roy’s suggestion he was wearing several layers of clothing, all of the visible pieces well-worn and not matching. He definitely looks homeless now, unlike the rather fake look he’d had when he’d found Roy and Jerry at the bus station.

They had started mid-afternoon after spending the morning doing the best they could to change their appearances, with Jerry and Denise’s help. While Jerry had been less than thrilled that he couldn’t be part of the expedition, he’d understood why and so had thrown himself into job of making Roy not look like Roy.

Denise actually had the easier job in some respects as it just involved dressing Tad ‘down’, which in itself made him look quite different from his college student image, and darkening his blonde hair—and with the help of some ‘instant tan’ his skin as well. Roy had cautioned them both that there was a difference between ‘I have to live on the streets’ look and ‘I’m a bum who doesn’t give a damn about my appearance any longer’.

Roy’s hair was now lighter than its normal black by several shades and Jerry had takes scissors to it to make it even shaggier than it had been before. Denise had ‘borrowed’ a pair of her boyfriend’s beat-up jeans and a shirt that looked like it had been through the wars. They were definitely too large for Roy until he’d added several layers of his own clothes. When he was finished he looked almost burly, not like the too-thin young man Tad had met only a few days before.

Tad and Roy had snuck out of the apartment building by the side door, managing to avoid being seen by anyone Tad knew. Twenty minutes later they were behind a downtown convenience store where Roy had given Tad a lesson on the finer points of dumpster diving for packaged food that had been tossed as being well beyond its sell date. When they were finished they began their search for Daws, or any word on where he’d been seen last.

By midnight all they had found out was that he hadn’t been in that particular section of the downtown area in the last few days, much to the relief of the street kids they’d talked to. The story they’d given out was that Daws had stolen from them and they were hunting for him to get their own back. Every one of the kids they told this to warned them to give up that idea. “He’ll kill you, dudes,” was the universal response, “Or worse.”

Now, as Tad tried to get comfortable on the thin blanket under them, he commented wryly, “I’d almost welcome him finding us. It couldn’t be worse than this.”

Roy chuckled as he covered them both with the other blanket. “Don’t like cuddling with me?”

“You, I have no objection to, it’s the lack of ambiance. Give me a nice, warm, soft bed with you in it and I’d be in seventh heaven.”

“We could go back to your place for what’s left of the night.”

Tad shook his head. “That sort of defeats the purpose of this whole thing. We have to be what we’re…” he paused. “Well I have to be what I’m pretending to be. You, unfortunately, have it down pat.”

Roy nodded. “That I do.”

“I didn’t mean…”

“I know.” Roy pulled Tad closer, pressing a kiss the back of his neck. “Go to sleep. We have a long day ahead of us, and maybe more than one.”