Boulevard by Jim Grimsley Page B

across from the Verti Mart on Sunday morning. Wondering why he had asked about Mama, after such a long time. Wondering what had put her on his mind.
    He stopped at the French Market and bought a few apples and a carton of salt, and hurried up the stairs carrying the bag. He sat in his room and bit into the apples and sprinkled salt on the crisp white flesh, savoring the apples and salt. He lost himself in a reverie, eating all the apples he had bought and sitting there, until suddenly there was a knock at the door.
    There stood Miss Kimbro, framed by the courtyard behind her, carrying something with a cord. She stepped inside and looked around and shoved the thing at him and said, “This comes with the room. You can cook with it.”
    â€œI can?”
    â€œPlug it in,” she said, and looked around again, as if he might have changed something, as if she were searching for some change he might have made in the room.“It’s a toaster oven.”
    â€œThat’s really nice of you,” he said, and she shrugged, and he plugged the oven into a receptacle near the bathroom and set it on top of the wicker clothes hamper.
    â€œDon’t leave it on that hamper, it’ll catch fire.”
    He moved the toaster oven to the little table.
    â€œDo you like the room?”
    â€œYes ma’am.”
    â€œYou think you’ll stay here?”
    â€œOh, yes ma’am.”
    He could hardly tell whether she heard him or not. She stepped to the bathroom and looked all around it. She looked down at the toaster oven, turned a knob at the front of it. At once the inside lit a luminous orange. “It works,” she said.
    â€œThank you.”
    By now she was opening the door and stepping outside. She stood with the door partly closed, one eye watching him. “Anyway, I just wanted to bring up the toaster oven, I have to get back to the shop.”
    â€œThank you, ma’am.”
    â€œOh yes,” she said, and vanished.
    In fact, she waited on the steps leading down to the slate floor of the loggia. She had no idea whether or not he was listening, she simply stood there, in a bit of breeze, with the sun bright and the warm breeze stirring. She had been distracted by the expression on Newell’s face, as if the thought of a toaster oven terrified him, or as if the room terrified him, or the city did. She stepped carefullydown the plank stairs. She should have a carpenter look at these steps. A good, young, strong carpenter to work in the hot sun, repairing these steps. She thought Newell would like that. At the bottom she looked up again, at the closed door. She could almost hear the silence inside. Stepping into the junk shop, she stood before the whirring blades of the oscillating fan, and a breeze swept across her first one way, then another.
    The whole afternoon and evening were busy, in fact, and she hardly got a breath of air before ten, when she locked the front door; she stood on the street for a long time, wandered to the corner. Upstairs, beyond the open shutters, the boy’s lamp was burning. He was sitting in the doorway reading. He had but the one lamp, maybe she ought to get him another. Still, she had given him a toaster oven. But it was clear from his reaction that he was not accustomed to being given anything at all.
    On Tuesday morning he woke up when the clock said 5:30 A.M . He had hardly ever woken up so early before, and he stumbled to the bath tub and ran hot water. He lay in the tub waking and sleeping, waking and sleeping, till finally he washed and rinsed himself as best he could. He dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, like the other guys he had seen in the restaurant.
    He headed for the Circle K with plenty of time. Some people were already seated in the dining room, and a thin waiter in a tight T-shirt slouched over them writing down their order. Curtis was at his desk, looking half asleep,yawning as Newell walked in.
    â€œOh, hi, it’s you,” Curtis