Bust Read Online Free PDF

I’m riding on the bus, coming downtown, when this chick gets on,” Bobby Rosa said. “I got Cinderella going, feeling nice and pumped, so I figure, Why not? She’s like, I don’t know, thirty years old, blonde hair, nice little shape. So I start staring at her, you know, trying to get her to look at me. Make the bitch’s day, right? They always say how chicks are hot for guys in wheelchairs — I wanted to see if that was bullshit or not.”
    Victor Gianetti, sitting across from Bobby at a table in the back of Lindy’s diner in the Hotel Pennsylvania, said, “So what happened next?” Trying to sound like he gave a fuck.
    “The girl starts to smile,” Bobby said. “But it wasn’t just a smile, like ‘Have a nice day.’ This was the smile of a girl who wants to get laid. So I’m thinking, This is it, my lucky day, when, all of a sudden, my legs start to spasm. I mean it’s like somebody stuck an electric prong up my ass. My legs are shaking, the chair’s bouncing up and down, people’re coming over trying to help me. Finally, I stop shaking and I look up at the chick and her mouth’s hanging open, looking at me like I’m some kind of freak.”
    “You are a freak, buddy,” Victor said straight-faced. Then he said, “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Jesus, where’s your sense of humor?”
    “I think you’re missing my whole point.” Bobby wondered why Victor never seemed to understand what thefuck he was talking about. “It wasn’t like I gave a shit what some chick thought of me — it’s just the way it is when you’re in a fucking wheelchair, you start buying into this whole being a cripple shit, know what I mean? I mean when it comes right down to it, what does anybody do with their lives? You eat, you shit, you go to sleep — I can still do all those things. I can even screw. They have medicine, all these devices. It probably would be a big pain in the ass, but I could do it. I ride the bus, I can go anywhere anybody else can go. There’s a word for what I’m talking about but I don’t know what it is.”
    “You feel like people are putting you down.”
    “I said a word, not a sentence.” Bobby thought, Is this guy a freaking moron or what? “It sounds like erection. Perception. It’s like everybody’s got this perception of me right off the bat. They see a big guy, late forties, wheelchair — they either feel sorry for me or they think I’m a fuckin’ freak. Kids, Jesus, they’re the fucking worst. Last winter, I go out to get a bottle of Coke when these three little kids start throwing snowballs at me. Not snow — ice. You know, like we used to throw at buses in the old days, now they throw them at people — what’s the fuckin’ world coming to? I swear to God, I was ready to go get my shotgun and blow the little fucks away. What happened to getting a little respect? The old days I’d walk down the street nobody’d come near me, but now the perception ’s changed. I’m the same guy — I can still beat the shit out of somebody if I had to — but nobody else sees it that way. You see what I’m saying?”
    “I guess so,” Victor said and took a sip of milk.
    Man, Bobby couldn’t get over how shitty Victor looked in that bellhop uniform. Was this really the same guy who used to dress in style, wearing snazzy pinstriped suits and shiny shoes? Yeah, he’d always had thin hair, but now he was completely bald and he looked like he might’velost twenty or thirty pounds since the last time Bobby had seen him, what, six years ago? There was something wrong with his voice too — it sounded hoarse and scratchy, like an old man. Bobby might not’ve even recognized him at all if he didn’t still have his dark skin and his big bent-out-of-shape nose that he’d probably broken dozens of times as a kid. Bobby could understand how a guy could lose some pounds and pack on the years, but he couldn’t see how anybody could go from armed robbery to carrying people’s luggage. Bobby