Pretending

Darryl breaks a rule. An unwritten one, but he knows — don’t eat the goldfish. Unless you want to quarrel with the Virgin Mary herself, you have to follow her rules. Her house, her rules.
That’s what he calls her, the Virgin Mary. She says the boy isn’t his, isn’t anyone’s, just her special love kid. Well, Darryl knows about special and he knows about kids, and the boy looks like him and the boy’s dumb like him. Everyone says so.
He didn’t plan to eat the fish. They were playing zoo, Darryl and the boy. The boy playing a goat and Darryl a grizzly bear. The goat drank some milk, ate some cheese, said it was the grizzly’s turn.
Well, it was the goat or the fish. A little feeder fish, right there in a plastic cup, ’til Darryl ate it. Taught the boy a valuable lesson, he did. Eat or be eaten, something like that. Boy should have known better. Went down well with whiskey anyway. A little crackly, but hardly tasted like anything, except shrimp flakes maybe.
Now the boy’s pouting. “Where’s my fish?”
“I ate it.” Darryl burps. “All gone.”
“But it was pretend,” says the boy.
“Pretend,” says Darryl. “Like the Virgin Mary pretends you ain’t my son? Well, I’ll be dogged if I’m gonna keep that up.”
The boy’s chin starts to quiver and Darryl knows what’s next. “Aw, shit,” he says, “let’s go get you another one. Got a dime?”