Broken Piano for President Read Online Free PDF Page B

Hamburgers has.”
    “Tony,” Hamler’s face faded into gray. “I don’t know if this is for me. I feel like shit. Do you know who that guy is?”
    “ Was , do I know who he was . The answer is yes, of course I did. But today he was just another job, all that terrible horseshit he’d done before, you heard him. Concentration camps like summer camps. Gross . The boss is right, Christopher Winters was a loose cannon. He was a security threat.”
    “I can’t think like that.”
    “You will.”

    Hamler loses focus when the neighbors start having sex. The thin apartment walls thump and crackle. It makes Henry’s stomach flip completely over, calculating the months since he last slept with anyone. I need to get out of here. Go buy some new strings.
    Slipping on shoes, he reconsiders. God, our band is stupid. I don’t want to practice tonight.
    The guilt from the Christopher Winters job embroiders his every thought. For a second, Henry considers jumping through the apartment window and breaking his neck. He dreams about taking off his other cufflink and stabbing himself. He thinks about going to the store for more candy.
    He chooses candy.

Dean stands in front of a hotel forty hours a week.
    The hotel is a tall cube of white brick. Carved beasties spout water from the rooftop during storms. When politicians or Hollywood stars swing through town, they stay here. Both hamburger companies treat foreign dignitaries in its mosaic of meeting halls. Dean parks all their cars.
    “Come on, just answer the question. Which way would you want to die?” Dean says.
    “Can you really die from a falling coconut?” Napoleon asks.
    Standing straight on his little legs, Napoleon’s a sawed-off shotgun in a white dinner jacket. A block of mushy flesh and tattoos hidden underneath. He’s worked this shift several years longer than Dean. It was the first job he took after deciding high school was a dead end.
    “Yeah, man. Those bastards are heavy, all that coconut milk. I heard they fall at something like two hundred miles an hour. That’d crush your skull, buddy.” Dean rubs Napoleon’s buzzcut.
    A slim silver car pulls up. A woman in sunglasses floats past without looking either in the face. Napoleon jumps behind the driver’s seat. He returns to the awning a few minutes later. “Well, I mean, I guess coconut.”
    “Really? I saw you as a shark man.”
    A black car worth several years of Deshler’s salary rolls slow and gropes the curb.
    “The shark would be drawn out and bloody…I’d be helpless. Way too much biting and chewing for me. Plus, salt water in an open wound…no thanks. I guess if a coconut killed me, it’d be over in a snap.”
    “I’m disappointed,” Deshler says, straightening his jacket. “I’d give you a fighting chance against a shark.”
    “Thanks,” he says with pep. Napoleon eyes their next customer. “Hey, man, you know that video camera I bought?”
    The man in the car is a blob. He oozes out like the seat is waxed. He flips a few stray French fries from shirtfront to his mouth. A bulldozer chest fills out his ketchup-colored suit to the point of demolition. Each stitch is pulled rigid as a violin string. He looks like Christopher Winters twenty years ago, if Christopher Winters had swallowed a tugboat.
    “Uh, no I don’t…” Dean says, fading. His headache almost completely gone.
    “It’s cool, really cool, just picked it up a couple days ago. Some old Sony, it actually uses VHS tapes. VHS tapes! I’m getting pretty handy with it. There’s some stuff you need to check out.”
    “Yeah, buddy, sure.”
    “Twenty bucks at the Goodwill. Shot some crazy footage last night. You should see it. You’re the star of the show, if you know what I mean.”
    “ What? Yeah right. Whatever.”
    Dean marvels at how the man’s suit wraps his skin like a red ink stain. Extra chins waggle under a plump brown mustache. He stands tall and adjusts the mustard yellow tie around a mustard yellow