When the Saints Read Online Free Page B

know how you turned out.”
    I prop my cigarette on a pickle jar lid. “Were they all craning their necks to see if I had my chauffeur drop me at the tavern?” I pluck a Schooner from his outstretched hand and wipe the condensation on my blouse.
    “I guess because you grew up somewhere else, they wonder if you might’ve turned yourself around. Who said you could smoke in here?”
    “Trust me, I was already grown up when I left here. I got sent to go live with another family, but it wasn’t long before they passed me on to Raspberry.”
    “That home for girls up in New Brunswick?”
    “Home for damaged goods is more like it. Everyone in there was either a violent whore, a suicide freak or crazier than the wind.”
    “I don’t think people know about you being in there.”
    “Guess not. You’d know if they did, right?” I sit down on the sofa and the cat leaps up into my lap.
    “So, which were you?”
    “What?”
    “Violent whore, suicide freak or crazy as the wind?”
    “Probably all three.” I pick up my smoke, look him over as I inhale. He’s gotten handsomer since he left this morning, taller or something. “I had you pegged wrong.”
    “How so?” he asks.
    I chew a fingernail. “Thought you didn’t like talking.”
    “I’m just getting warmed up.”
    “Aren’t bartenders just supposed to listen to people?”
    “I wouldn’t exactly call reaching into a broken beer fridge fifty times a night bartending.” He stretches out on the recliner and finally notices I rearranged his living room set. “Christ almighty, you’re making yourself at home, ain’t you?”
    I HANG OUT AT HIS HOUSE AGAIN THE NEXT DAY. T HE paperboy tosses the
Solace River Review
into his neighbour’s driveway and I run out and grab it. There’s an article on the front page about a local woman who made a fortune selling old junk she found in her basement. I root through West’s closets to see if he has any hidden treasure, but he hasn’t got much more than a bag of rolled up nickels and a gold chain with an eagle pendant hanging off it. As I’m fixing myself a cup of tea, I notice that the photograph is missing from the shelf, the one of him with the hot redhead.
    He comes home early while it’s still light out and I make spaghetti from a can with some garlic-buttered toast. We actually sit down at his little table. His chairs don’t match; one’s wooden country-style and the other’s the metal fold-up kind you find in church halls. I wonder if he ever had two matching chairs and, if so, where’d the other one go? I try to picture him getting pissed off in a poker game and cracking it over someone’s head, but he doesn’t seem the type. This morning he tripped over my purse and apologized even though I was the one who left it lying in the middle of the floor. He bent down and starting picking everything up, and when I tried to explain why I havea rear-view mirror in there, he said it was none of his business and just tossed it in with my toothbrush.
    “This is tasty,” he says between bites. He picks up his bowl so his fork can reach his mouth faster.
    “This? A monkey could make this. You should get some real groceries so I can cook you a roast.”
    He takes a few bills out of his pocket and tosses them across the table, which is just what I’d hoped he’d do.
    “Listen,” I say, shoving the money down my sock. “I need to know things.”
    “Then ask.”
    “I’m not spreading my legs again until you give me some information.”
    “Jesus!” He chokes on a noodle and coughs, slams his bowl down. “What the hell is the matter with you? I said ASK.”
    “Who made my family leave?”
    He wipes his mouth on a paper towel and scowls. “Some guys were hired to go out to the house.”
    “Why?”
    “Your father was running some kind of scam.”
    “So? He was always running a scam.”
    “I don’t know the particulars. He got himself tangled up in a dope rope. Told some rich guys he was going to triple