Second Hand: A Tucker Springs Novel 2 by Marie Sexton Page A

unresolved loss and other head-shrinky things than with crass commercialism and sentimentality. On a purely academic level, he even empathized. Reality, though, was difficult to swallow. Reality was slipping on papers that littered the stairs as he helped Lorenzo haul Abuelo’s old tools out to his truck, knowing they had to move fast because if Patti came back before they were done, they were screwed, that the fit to end all fits would ensue. Reality was standing in the sweltering heat of the attic with dust choking their throats as they argued over how much they could take before she’d miss anything. Reality was knowing the piece-of-junk eight-track player they found wouldn’t bring ten bucks in El’s shop but would send his mother into spirals of betrayal, so they couldn’t even throw it out.
    Reality was hauling only three pickup-loads worth of stuff out of the attic and leaving a house full of crap behind.
They managed to pull it off, though, and by the time the girls got back, the men had returned to the patio with a fresh round of beer and huge plates of food. They kept quiet, knowing it wasn’t over yet, that if they’d disturbed too much on the way out the door she would suspect what had been done. El thought for sure she’d figure it out because they almost never got him to come over unless it was for something like this, and he was ready for the fallout, ready despite his earlier vows to stay out of things, ready to tell his mother she had to let go, that things were only things and didn’t matter, that it was more important her grandchildren had room to play in the house than it was for her to collect every salvageable piece of junk from people’s trash. He was ready, but it never happened. She was too busy showing off the new things she’d bought, the delight and wonder they provided her dancing in her eyes.
El finished his food as quickly as he could, downed his beer, and chain-smoked his way back to his apartment over the shop.
He lay awake thinking about what Abuela had said about being lonely. There in the dark, he admitted she was right, but the truth—the cold, hard truth—was that there wasn’t any sure way to happiness, or any way at all, period. Not lasting. Rosa chased men and had their babies. Patti bought crap and combed through garbage. Abuela fussed over people. Denver fucked twinks and bench-pressed cars. Jase fought to keep his bar from the bill collectors.
Nobody was happy, not really. Everyone was lonely. El and everybody else, they all waded through the misery that was life and tried to find some pleasure secondhand. Pick something at random and cling to that, because there was no magic bullet train to happiness.
That should have been enough, that talking-to he gave himself. Except damned if he didn’t lie there thinking about the way Paul’s hands had moved when he’d tried to mimic the motion of a weed whacker, Paul’s voice echoing inside El’s head, bright and polite and funny as he said over and over, “Spinny-things.”

chapter 9
    I
    felt a little silly carrying a cappuccino maker into El’s store, but I made myself do it anyway.
“Paul,” he said when I walked in. His bright smile made
    me feel a little less ridiculous. “What are you doing here?” “You give people money for stuff like this, right?” I asked
as I put the machine down on the counter.
“That is part of my job description. How’s the weed
whacker?”
“It’s good.”
“And the job?”
I fidgeted, flustered by the questions. “Good, I guess.”
He seemed to be waiting for something, so I said, “How are
you?”
His smile got bigger. “Can’t complain. My day just got
significantly better.”
“Because you need a cappuccino maker?”
He laughed. “Yeah, that’s it,” he said in a way that told me
that wasn’t it at all.
I felt awkward, like I was missing a joke. I decided that
meant I should get down to business. “So, can you give me
money for this?”
He shrugged and finally bent