2 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas Read Online Free PDF Page B

says.
    “Not the same,” Sarina says.
    “It’s settled!” Principal Randles throws up her hands and returns to the Kellys with bright eyes.
    Sarina scans the aisle for Madeleine, but the girl hasalready returned to her pew and is watching Clare step-crutch onto the altar toward the microphone.
    Sarina takes her place next to her grade partner. “Isn’t she an angel?” the woman says, meaning Clare.
    The organist restarts the intro. Clare opens her mouth to sing.

10:30 A.M.
    T he first thing Ray asks when he answers the phone is whether the roof he installed in 1985 is intact. When Lorca assures him it is, Ray delivers a sermon on The Importance of a Sturdy Roof. “… The plumbing will rot, the floors will join them, but I used the best materials money could buy on that roof.” Lorca listens, sitting amid the wreckage of Gus’s model plane. Flaps, wheels, the fuselage, emergency doors. Ray runs a construction company in Reading that employs wanderers and harmless crooks. “I loved your father a lot. Jackie?” Ray interrupts himself. “How much trouble are you in?”
    “Am I that obvious?” Lorca says.
    Lorca hears laughing, then the unmistakable sound of nose spray. “Only one reason to call Reading.”
    Lorca tells him about the citation and asks for the money.
    “Can’t do it, buddy,” Ray says. “They slaughtered me.”
    Blood evacuates Lorca’s ears and cheeks. He doesn’t know who “they” are. They could be the government, the union, the clattering aunts on Ray’s wife’s side who take dazed, hospitalizing falls twice a year.
    “I always thought it’d be Max who’d run the club into the ground,” Ray says. “Always disappearing. Showing up with this girl or that.”
    “That would have been what they call a safe bet,” Lorca says.
    “At least you don’t have to spray a boatload of chemicals up your nose every second,” Ray says. “Be thankful for your health. And Alex and Louisa. You still smoking?”
    Lorca says he is.
    “Maybe quit. Do you pray?”
    “I don’t,” Lorca says.
    “Maybe start.” More coughing. This time Ray is laughing. “Why did the cop come today?” he says. “As opposed to last week, or never?”
    Lorca rolls a plane wheel over the table. “Last night,” he says. “We set fire to Gus’s drum set and someone called the cops.”
    The purgatory of his uncle’s silence follows. “Why would you do something like set fire to a drum set?”
    Lorca wants to bring his fist down in the middle of the table and send the plane’s pieces hurtling into the dirty walls. The tail is separate from the body. The cockpit arranged at an awkward angle to dry. Lorca has asked Gus several times to get rid of the plane. He gets nervous around delicate things.
    “Louisa left,” Lorca says. “I wanted to see something”—he rests his forehead against the hard wood of the table—“bright.”

11:10 A.M.
    T he twenty-four children of Miss Greene’s art class wear twenty-four Santa hats and color twenty-four pictures of Santa. Each child’s name is spelled in glitter on the cotton brim of his or her hat. The classroom smells like fish and damp lunches.
    Because the seats are arranged by height order and because when it comes to height Madeleine is nothing special, she sits in the third row, first desk, coloring and giving herself pep talks. Her mother taught her not to dwell so Madeleine cheers herself by replaying the moment in the third chorus of “Here I am, Lord,” when Clare squeaked on the word
I
.
    Clare colors her Santa methodically, using classic hues: scarlet for the coat, white for the trim, forest green for the holly leaf that hangs above his head. When she needs red for Santa’s cheeks, she muscles the crayon from diabetic Duke’s hand.
    In the space next to Santa’s outline, Madeleine lists songs she will practice later. “Take the A Train,” “Hey There.” At least there will be caramel apples. Madeleine spies them on the craft table, covered by