First You Try Everything Read Online Free

rodeos in Ohio. Another pamphlet was
older, but relevant as ever with regard to factory farms. Even if you like meat, you can help end this cruelty , the front of
the pamphlet said. She handed them out now, asking people just to take a look.
One man put his hand up. “Been there, done that,” he said, winking. Others
grabbed and began reading immediately, nodding and thanking her.
    Evvie wanted to go home. She missed her husband as
if he were on a large ship in the Baltic. She would remember this whole day as
filled with surrealistic omens, a million miniature crows with human faces
filling the air. This was the sky inside her too. Probably she was just getting
the flu.
    â€œCan I borrow your cell?” she said to a
kindly-looking thin man whose jaw was wrapped in a red scarf.
    She walked a few steps toward the church wall and
called her husband. “I’m protesting,” she said. “Down at the church. Wanna join
me?”
    â€œI’m still doing bills.”
    â€œReally? Oh. Wow. Well, I have a question.”
    â€œYes?”
    â€œDo you still love me?”
    â€œOf course I love you.”
    â€œIs something wrong? You’re so distant.”
    â€œNo. Just come home.”
    â€œI miss the old days,” she said, and clenched her
eyes shut, turning away from the crowd. “I miss our pushcart and the house on
Rosewood and even being broke. I miss our old customers and how we used to be.”
The words brought with them a gut-roiling torrent of longing.
    â€œYeah,” he said, and let go a sigh.
    â€œDo you too?”
    â€œI don’t miss being broke. But yeah, maybe
sometimes I miss the pushcart.”
    â€œAnd all those crazy customers we loved! They were
a part of our life for all those years, and just like that they all vanish. We
don’t even mention them anymore!”
    â€œEvvie, come home.”
    â€œMy heart’s going a mile a minute. I think it’s
about to explode. Something’s wrong. It isn’t normal.”
    â€œDon’t be scared. Just come home. You’re
just—everything will be all right.”
    â€œIt will?”
    â€œYes, I promise, just come home, Ev.”
    She explained to the Bush impersonator that she had
to go. He nodded, and she saw some hopeful light flicker in his face that told
her all was not lost, he would maybe each day find someone in the world who
would befriend him for a little while, and his loneliness would be alleviated
occasionally, in small spurts, and his strangeness—whatever it was at his core
that made him one of life’s impenetrable outcasts—that too would be pacified
little by little, she hoped.
    On the way back she walked to the convenience
store, but the saintly clerk (she’d started thinking of him that way) was not
working today. The hefty clerk with a crew cut and a Russian accent and small
blue eyes told her he usually worked nights, and that his name was Ranjeev. “But
we never call him that.” And then the Russian man shook his head, unsmiling.
Evvie wasn’t sure what he was attempting to communicate. That Ranjeev was a
problem of some kind? A joke? Her face must have looked puzzled, because the
Russian man stopped shaking his head, crossed his big arms, and signaled with
his eyes that their interaction was over.
    â€œWhat do you call him?” she tried.
    The Russian man peered at her. “We call him
Apu.”
    â€œApu? Like the guy on The
Simpsons ?” Evvie smiled.
    The Russian man nodded, arms still crossed. “Apu
like The Simpsons .”
    Evvie smiled. She wanted the man to smile back. She
was fascinated by his tremendous ability to refrain from smiling, and by her own
perverse need to stand there smiling at him in spite of this. “Good night,” she
finally sang. “Tell Apu I said hello!”

Ben
    B itterly
cold mornings in Pittsburgh sometimes resemble evenings. People get themselves
into cars and go to work, or