Bereavements Read Online Free PDF Page B

anint no fuckin lie. im 22 but evryone says i look 18 tops. nice and slim. hard muscels and lits of thinl thick hair like you want to put your i hands into.thats what the girsl say. and on my chest to and belly like some d godamn forest. and if its meat your after-lady yousure come to the best super market in town (joke, ha! ha!--get it)--eight (ate--ha,ha) fucking inches. you love it up for me real nice and ill screw you into tomorrow, and the day aftre that Lady - you want to be bangged croseyed? then you ask Paulo, hear.? you say nicelike Paulo - i want that jesus-sweet beautifull giantsize supremarket dick of yours. you say -Paulo - I want. . .”

    Breathless, pained, Mrs. Evans turned her eyes from the page. She was shaking: not from dismay or the slightest distress at the sexual intent and quality of the letter or the obvious delight Mr.—what?—who?— Passannante derived from exposing his strong sexual needs and fantasies to a woman he’d created in his head, but the bewildering unexpected reality of its connection with Jamie. Had her son’s dying breath placed, eleven months later, six pages of illiterate pornography in her trembling hands?
    Paulo Passannante!
    im real goodlooking,noshit.
    She was able to tear the letter to shreds, every page . . .
    and that anint no fuckin lie.
    . . . but not the words.
    (maube he got V.D.—joke, ha, ha!) and now your looking to swing itwith some other real young gy guy.meb like me . . .

    Angel in the safe, the tape in the desk drawer, Messrs. Passannante and Fabrizzi a cheerless New Year’s Eve celebration all over her beautiful carpeted floor . . .
    Rose would “tsk, tsk” to be sure, wielding her vacuum nozzle like the voracious snout of an ant-eater, gulping down the confetti she’d made of “Nicky” and “Paulo.”
    you want to be bangged croseyed . . .?
    She stared at the remaining two letters, tempted not to open them, to throw them, indeed everything, all of it, away.
    Only the thought of Angel stayed her.
    Please fine me . . .
    One thing, however—be sure of that—no more letters. These would be all. These seven. No more.

    “Dear Madam:”
    Well! That seemed civilized, if a bit formal. Under the circumstances of her ad, probably it was the best one could do, or say (though the penmanship was painfully self-conscious, slanted to the left in a fine, meticulous script).
    “I read your advertisement with sympathy and wonder. With puzzlement, I must add. With unsatisfied curiosity. But also, initially, with a concluding shrug of indifference. One sees so many odd, even ridiculous ads in The Village Voice.
    “I had no thought of answering, of writing a reply of some sort, or inquiry. Yet later, days later, I found myself remembering your few strange words; perhaps not so much ‘remembering,’ as ‘unable to forget’ since this, the latter, has a haunting quality the former does not possess.
    “And finally, after three false starts, I find myself writing to you again, and (who knows?) this time I may actually find the courage to send the letter.
    “It is now, at this moment I write, well after midnight, but I have promised myself . . .”
    Mrs. Evans paused in her reading, staring up at nothing in particular for a moment’s blank thought, vaguely puzzled, the reason for it not yet clear. She went on—
    “. . . I have promised myself to seal, address and stamp the envelope, then take it to my corner mailbox, which is just a block away.
    “There I reserve my final options. I may, with good sense, tear up the letter, or, with equal good sense, irrevocably mail it—‘good sense’ in this instance being intuition, since in this matter I am truly gifted.
    “One danger: loneliness, sheer loneliness may prompt me to stretch out my hand to open that metal maw, desperate. . .” (Mrs. Evans paused, taking a second to realize that “metal maw” meant “mailbox”) “. . . desperate to ease my psychic isolation.
    “But to go on. Since I wax too long, let