He smiled with the corners of his lips. Then he turned and walked away. Suddenly, he stopped and turned around.
Ko said softly, “I promise you. There’ll be another night, little boy.”
I was careful when I stepped into the street. I slid into a deep shadow, glanced inside the envelope, and saw that it held a stack of hundred dollar bills. Later, when I carefully counted them, I discovered they added up to twenty-five thousand dollars.
I stashed the money in my jacket, zipped up against the cold, and considered how to get out of the city in the least visible manner.
The next night, sitting at the counter of a truck stop diner, I celebrated my eighteenth birthday.
I took a bite of stale cake.
It tasted very good.
