Orange Suitcase Read Online Free Page B

like, in character, and instead of laughing I say, ‘Don’t you laugh at me, you fucking bitch, don’t you dare,’ but I say it a little loud, and now people are looking, right, because it’s Saturday afternoon and we’re in the middle of a mall parking lot. But we stay in character. So I move like I’m going to hit her, and she starts to pretend-cry and run off in the opposite direction. But I catch up and grab her arm, hard, like I’m all pissed off, and I yell in my best Brando, ‘No! Don’t you fucking pull this shit! Don’t you even fucking try to pull this shit here!’ and so then she starts to really wail, ‘Somebody help me! Help!’ And suddenly there’s this old man pulling me away, and his wife is there too, or at least some old lady, and so this lady is petting my wife and saying, ‘It’ll be okay, honey, don’t you worry, it’s okay,’ and this old man’s like, ‘A man doesn’t treat a young lady like that, get your hands off of her, be a man,’ etcetera, and my wife keeps crying and overacting, saying things like ‘Oh Lord I’m so afraid! Oh Jesus help me!’ and she’s clutching onto this little old lady as if for dear life. So now there’s really a crowd of shoppers forming around us, and I’m starting to get a little nervous, you know, because I think people are getting the wrong idea, that maybe we’ve pushed too hard this time, and I’m trying to figure out whether or not my wife is getting nervous too. But then everyone is talking and I hear someone ask her, ‘Is that your husband, sweetheart?’ And she says, still all in tears and choking, ‘He’s…he’s my father!’ and at that I just lose it, just start cracking up, because we watched Chinatown the night before and that was what she was referencing, you know, that last scene. So at that point she sees me laughing and she starts laughing too, and everyone around us just sort of is standing around like a bunch of retards wondering what the hell is going on, and that’s when my wife yells out, ‘Run, Jack!’ and so we run to the car and get in and drive away.”

Grandparents. Seattle, Wa. 1957.

“Something About A Promise”
    T he old farmer rocked in his white rocking chair, snoring. Paint flakes fell from the arms, a white circle around him. High in the tree, Ben and I loaded our guns. The shotgun that killed Mr. T rested across the farmer’s lap and his snores carried; his head tilted back, jaw open. I watched through the cedar’s flat needles. The chair creaked. The farmer’s fat and angry wife was nowhere to be seen. I looked across the limb at my best friend and saw what he was thinking: That sonofabitch killed my cat. Ben pumped his gun and a smile split his face like a gash. Everything was exactly as we’d planned. I didn’t want to be here, but I had promised. I stared down the barrel to Old Farmer Ed’s open mouth and checked the safety. My fingers were sticky with pine sap. I tapped at the trigger and aimed at his crotch, remembered the time he caught me in his yard chasing a football. The fat wife had called my mother, said I was stealing carrots from her husband’s garden. I looked at Ben; I felt like crying but I had promised. Aim for his crotch, he told me again. I am, I said. I looked down the barrel. A promise was a promise. My eyes were wet, itched, and I held my breath. My heart felt tremendous in my chest, growing, hugely inflating, and then everything broke.

“Something About the Orange Suitcase”
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    W hen I was six years old I loved basketball and hated church. I dreamed in Spalding orange. Traffic cones and life vests, reflective spray paint and plastic pieces of fruit. I had an orange bike, orange bunk bed, orange crayons worn to their nubs from the orange drawings made during Mass. When I asked my mother what to pray for