The Free (P.S.) Read Online Free Page B

trash to get to the stairwell. She led him up six flights until they came to the door of her apartment. She took a key from her coat and opened three bolt locks. Inside, the walls and ceiling of her apartment were ragged, the plaster falling down in patches from water damage. Her front room was simple, just a couch, two wooden chairs, and a bookcase lined with novels and comic books. There was a balcony with a view of the harbor, which held a long row of warships. The walls had old water-stained floral wallpaper and nothing hung from them except a single framed picture of the Portuguese singer Amália Rodrigues.
    “How do you know Amália Rodrigues?” Leroy asked. “I love Amália Rodrigues.”
    Jeanette went to the picture. It was an old black-and-white press photo. She took it from the wall and handed it to him.
    “You’ll think I’m crazy, but one time I had a dream that I was in a trailer. It was like an Airstream trailer but it wasn’t as nice. Inside there was music playing and I was in love. The boy in the dream held me. He was very corny. He would whisper in my ear that he loved me more than anything. He’d say things like, ‘I love you more than a thousand planets. I love you more than all the oceans in the universe and more than all the candy bars ever made . . .’ You should have heard him. He was very funny. So that day we danced while Amália Rodrigues sang to us. There was a record player on a table and he would play her albums for me over and over. He said he would take me to Portugal: he said he’d find her for me even if he had to spend his whole life looking. He would kiss my neck as he told me these things. I had never heard of her before that. I barely knew where Portugal was, but in my dream we fell asleep together in the trailer. He held me on a fold-out bed. While I was sleeping I dreamt that she came to me and told me to find her. When I woke up, I remembered her name, and began looking for her records. It took me a year to find one.”
    “She just came to you in a dream like that?”
    “Yes,” Jeanette said.
    “That’s the strangest thing I’ve ever heard. My uncle had a trailer once, and we would sit in it and listen to Amália Rodrigues records every Friday after he got off work . . . See, years before that, after he’d gotten out of high school, there were no jobs. He wasn’t really worried at first, but then everything he applied for he didn’t get. He was going to have to move to a different city to find work, but then he got drafted. The Vietnam War was going full blast by then. In a way he was relieved. At least he’d have money; at least in a way he would have a job. The notice he received said he had three months until he had to report. So his father took him aside and told him he should see something of the world in case he got killed. He gave my uncle his life savings of two thousand dollars and a plane ticket to Europe.
    “My uncle landed in Madrid, Spain. He worked his way to Portugal and one night in a club in Lisbon he heard Amália Rodrigues sing. He said she sang the most heartbreaking songs and had the most beautiful voice he’d ever heard. He stayed in Portugal until his time ran out. He saw her night after night after night.
    “Years later he lived with my mom and me in the backyard of our house. He lived in a trailer, a trailer that looked like an Airstream but wasn’t as nice. On Fridays when the work-week was done, he’d sit down with a twelve-pack of beer and listen to her music. My mom would sometimes yell at him for playing the records so loud, but my mom liked her too, and she liked that there was something her brother still loved. Sometimes you’d go into his trailer and Amália Rodrigues would be singing and he’d be sitting at his table smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, smiling and crying at the same time.”
    “I can’t believe in my dream there was a trailer, and in reality your uncle listened to her in a trailer. That doesn’t make