The Twelfth Card

what? She looked at a few of the other titles, books by Judy Blume, Dr. Seuss, Pat McDonald. Children’s and young adult books. Wonderful authors, she knew them all. But she’d read their stories years ago. What was up with this? Didn’t Ronelle and the kids know her? The most recent books she’d read for pleasure had been novels for adults: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro and The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles. The last time she’d read Green Eggs and Ham had been ten years ago.
    Maybe there was something better in the bottom. She started to reach into it.
    A knock on the door startled her.
    “Come in.”
    Thom entered, carrying a tray with a Pepsi and some snacks on it.
    “Hi there,” he said.
    “Hi.”
    “Thought you’d need some sustenance.” He opened the soda for her. She shook her head at the glass he was about to pour it into. “The can’s fine,” she said. She wanted to keep all the empties so she knew exactly how much to repay Mr. Rhyme.
    “And . . . health food.” He handed her a Kit Kat candy bar, and they laughed.
    “Maybe later.” Everybody was trying to fatten her up. Fact was, she just wasn’t used to eating. That was something you did with family around a table, not by yourself, hunched over an unsteady table in a basement as you read a book or jotted notes for a paper about Hemingway.
    Geneva sipped the soda, as Thom took over unloading the books for her. He held them up one by one. There was a novel by C. S. Lewis. Another: The Secret Garden.
    Still nothing for adults.
    “There’s a big one at the bottom,” he said, lifting it out. It was a Harry Potter book, the first one in the series. She’d read it when it had first come out.
    “You want it?” Thom asked.
    She hesitated. “Sure.”
    The aide handed her the heavy volume.
    *   *   *
    A jogger, a man in his forties, approached, glancing toward Jax, the homeless vet, wearing his trash-picked jacket, sporting a hidden pistol in his sock and thirty-seven cents of charity in his pocket.
    The jogger’s expression didn’t change as he ran past. But the man altered course just a tiny bit, to put an extra foot or so between him and the big black guy, a shift so little you could hardly see it. Except to Jax it was as clear as if the man had stopped, turned around and fled, calling out, “Keep your distance, nigger.”
    He was sick of this racial-dodgeball shit. Always the same. Is it ever going to change?
    Yes. No.
    Who the hell knew?
    Jax bent down casually and adjusted the pistolthat was stuffed into his sock and pressing uncomfortably against bone, then continued up the street, moving slow with his scar-tissue limp.
    “Yo, you got some change?” He heard the voice from behind him as a man approached.
    He glanced back at a tall, hunched-over man with very dark skin, ten feet behind him. The guy repeated, “Yo, change, man?”
    He ignored the beggar, thinking, This’s pretty funny: All day he’d been fronting he was some homeless dude or another and here comes a real one. Serves me right.
    “Yo, change?”
    He said brusquely, “No, I don’t have any.”
    “Come on. Ever’body got change. An’ they fuckin’ hate it. They wanta get rid of it. All them coins be heavy and you can’t buy shit with it. I be doing you a favor, brother. Come on.”
    “Get lost.”
    “I ain’t ate for two days.”
    Jax glanced back, snapped, “Course not. ’Cause you spent all your paper on those Calvin Kleins.” He glanced at the man’s clothes—a dirty but otherwise nice-looking set of royal-blue Adidas workout clothes. “Go get a job.” Jax turned away and started up the street.
    “Hokay,” the bum said. “You ain’t gimme any change, then how’s ’bout you gimme your motherfuckin’ hands?”
    “My—?”
    Jax found his legs pulled out from underneath him. He slammed facedown onto the sidewalk. Before he could twist around and grab his gun both wrists were pinned behind his back and what seemed to be a large pistol was shoved into the nook behind his ear.
    “The fuck you doing, man?”
    “Shut up.” Hands patted him down and found the hidden pistol. Handcuffs ratcheted on and Jax was jerked into a sitting position. He found himself looking over an FBI identification card. The first name on it was Frederick. The second was Dellray.
    “Oh, man,” Jax said, his voice hollow. “I don’t need this shit.”
    “Well, guess what, sonny, there a lot more manure comin’ yo’ way. So you