The Poser Read Online Free

containers on and off ships, Dun Harbor’s greatest landmark was the state prison, a dismal knuckle of gray, from which you were wise to keep your distance.
    â€œWhat’s a stage?” he asked me.
    â€œI don’t think I know,” I said in my ticket seller’s voice. I couldn’t believe how much effort it took not to do him.
    â€œA set of quotation marks. On a stage, you’re not saying anything as
you
. You’re saying, ‘
What if
I said this.’ You’re saying, ‘
What if
I were
this.’ Now, I’m willing to bet you’ve been living a what-if kind of life all along while everyone around you’s been
saying
and
doing
, getting in their cars and drinking cherry soda.” He lifted his gaze toward the low, lifeless buildings. “What do you say we get out of this goddamn heat?”
    I couldn’t say no to him. What I mean is, I was physically incapable. I was like a moon in the orbit of a bullying planet.
    â€œOkay,” I said.
    He patted my back so hard I rattled. “Excellent! Excellent!”
    Together we walked up the sorry boulevard. He talked more and more, his hands dancing to his speech. I pulled out the ball of lint to toss in the gutter, realizing, as soon as I did, what it was.
    â€œWhat’s that there?”
    I handed it to him, hoping he’d read it in silence. Instead he cleared his throat. “If Giovanni has given you this note, it is because an incident has occurred. Please understand no harm is meant. He is simply sympathetic to the bone.” He frowned, impressed. “A boy who comes with a manual!” Maybe he noticed my expression. “Have you heard the one about the man who wanted to forget his past?”
    I shook my head.
    â€œOh, it’s a classic.” He smiled like a ringmaster. “An old widower, right? Terrible past. His wife killed, all three of his sons killed, his two daughters, cow, dog, even his lovely, baby pigeon ‘Orangutan’—all dead. Someone destroyed his pigeon. It’s a whole other thing. Anyway he prays to God, saying, ‘How can I get rid of the past? Jesus, please erase my past. I’d rather be ignorant than live with this foul dung on my brain. Please, oh, please.’ Because he’s afraid, you see. ‘With this past, how can I have room for anything new, oh, Jesus.’ And so one night the man’s praying, and Jesus comes to him and says, ‘You want to forget the past?’ ‘Yes,’ the man said. ‘Yes, thank you.’ ‘You want to be freed of it, have it erased?’ ‘Yes, Jesus,’ the guy’s saying. ‘You really want to?’ ‘Yes, oh, yes.’ And Jesus tells him, Jesus looks at him and Jesus says:
‘Forget about it!’
”
    He slapped his right thigh and hooted toward the sky.
    â€œNow,
that’s
a joke,” he said after his laughter softened to a sigh. Then he said, “Oh, right,” as if remembering something he’d planned to do for a long time. He held the note with both hands and, with a magician’s solemnity, tore it up in the sunlight, like confetti, like a celebration, like he’d made a rabbit disappear.

TWO
    â€œThe place is, well,
unclean
,” Max warned as we trudged up the five flights in the tenement where he rented a room. The light fixtures droned like insects. “You’re my worst disease!” a woman somewhere yelled. When we reached his door, a copper
4
hung sideways, resembling in that position a crude sailboat. He fought with the lock. “C’mon,” he muttered. “Mean, goddamn—” Then it yawned open, and the odor hit us.
    It smelled like many things, like curdled milk, newsprint, and cabbage, but above all reeked of meat. Either Max had murdered a pig or his native musk hung around so long, had become to the air what wallpaper is to walls. “Home—sweetest—sit, boy, sit.” The door