A Bridge of Years Read Online Free PDF Page A

frankly sucks.
And he has a point, because it creates a problem for the sales
manager. He knows you're my brother, so the question becomes, do I
handle this guy with kid gloves or do I treat him like any other
employee?"
    "I
don't want any special treatment," Tom said.
    "I
know! Of course! You know
that, / know that. But I had to go to the manager—Billy Klein,
you'll meet him tomorrow —I had to go to him and say, Hey, Billy,
just do your job. If this guy fucks up then tell him so. If he
doesn't work out, you tell me. This is not a featherbed. I want the
maximum from this man."
    "Sure
enough," Tom said, inspecting the greasy remains of the steak on
his plate.
    "There
are basically two things I want to make clear," Tony said. "One
is that if you screw up, I look bad. So as a favor to me, please
don't screw up. The second is that Billy has a free hand as far as
I'm concerned. You answer to him from now on. I don't do his job and
I don't look out for you. And he is not always an easy man to please.
Frankly, he wouldn't piss down your throat if your guts were on fire.
If it works out, then fine, but if not— what
the hell are you smiling at?"
    "
'Piss down your throat if your guts were on fire'?" "It's a colloquialism. Jesus,
Tom, it's not supposed to be funny!"
    "Barbara
would have loved it."
    Barbara
would have repeated it for weeks. Once, during a phone call, Tony had
described the weather as "cold as the tits on a brass monkey."
Barbara laughed so hard she had to pass Tom the receiver. Tom
explained patiently that she'd swallowed her gum.
    But
Tony wasn't amused. He wiped his mouth and slapped the napkin down on
the table. "If you want this job you'd better think a little
more about your future and a little less about your hippy-dippy
ex-wife, all right?"
    Tom
flushed. "She wasn't—"
    "No!
Spare me the impassioned defense. She's the one who ran off with her
twenty-year-old boyfriend. She doesn't deserve your loyalty and you
sure as shit don't owe it to her."
    "Tony,"
Loreen said. Her tone was pleading. Please,
not here.
    Barry,
the five-year-old, had wandered in from the back yard; he stood with
one peanut butter-encrusted hand on the armoire and gazed at the
adults with rapt, solemn interest.
    Tom
desperately wanted to be able to deliver an answer— something
fierce and final-—and was shocked to discover he couldn't produce
one.
    "It's
a new world," Tony said. "Get used to it."
    "I'll
serve the dessert," Loreen said.
    After
dinner Tony went off to tuck in Barry and read him a story. Tricia
was already asleep in her crib, and Tom sat with Loreen in the
cooling kitchen. He offered to help with the dishes but his
sister-in-law shooed him away: "I'm just rinsing them for
later." So he sat at the big butcher-block table and peered
through the window toward the dark water of the bay, where
pleasure-boat lights bobbed in the swell.
    Loreen
dried her hands on a dish towel and sat opposite him. "It's not
such a bad fife," she said.
    Tom
gave her a long look. It was the kind of bald statement Loreen
was prone to, couched in the slow Ohio Valley cadences of her youth.
Her life here, she meant; her life with Tony: not so bad.
    "I
never said it was," Tom told her.
    "No.
But I can tell. I know what you and Barbara thought of us." She
smiled at him. "Don't be embarrassed. I mean, we might as well
talk. It's all right to talk."
    "You
have a good life here."
    "Yes.
We do. And Tony is a good man."
    "I
know that, Loreen."
    "But
we're nothing special. Tony would never admit it, of course. But
that's the fact. Down deep, he knows. And maybe it makes him a little
mean sometimes. And maybe / know it, and I get a little sad—for a
little while. But then I get over it."
    "You're
not ordinary. You're both very lucky."
    "Lucky,
but ordinary. The thing is, Tom, what's hard is that you and Barbara were special.
It always tickled me to see you two. Because you were special and you
knew it. The way you smiled at each other and the way you talked.