Dead Cat Bounce Read Online Free PDF

me about yourself.”
    It was the question he hated most in life. It wasn’t what she really wanted to know, he was sure of that, it was just theopening step in a verbal ritual dance that would continue until she had him pigeonholed. She wouldn’t be direct, either, it would be, “What kind of work do you do?” and “Where do you come from?” and “What kind of music do you listen to?” In the part of Brooklyn where he had grown up, your physical stature and your reputation for toughness went a long way in establishing your manhood, and he had grown comfortable with himself, measured by those standards. In Brooklyn Heights, though, what they really wanted to know was how much money you had, and how you had gotten it.
    â€œI’m the super,” he told her. That was the first answer his brain handed him, along with a tickle of self-loathing, every time the subject came up. I’m a custodian. I mop floors, I coax that ancient boiler to send you heat, I brought the garbage out to the curb. There were other things he could say. He was a mechanic, and a gifted one at that, he was an investor, he was a student in search of a teacher. And when he worked with Fat Tommy and Stoney, he was a liar, a thief, and a con artist. Any of those answers were true, but his mouth did not seem to want to form the words that would make him look better in her eyes.
    He didn’t understand why he felt ashamed. He made a nice living, he sent a few bucks home to his mother, what was wrong with that? The problem was, he knew that he had potential, he just didn’t know how to unlock it, so he condemned himself to loser status. A custodian in a neighborhood of stockbrokers and lawyers. Short-dick motherfucker…It seemed that everyone else could unzip and lay it out there. “Hey, kid, look at this. You see this? This is a man, by God…” And he was just a boy.
    â€œI know that, silly,” she said, reaching out, touching him on the shoulder. “It says so right on your doorbell. But youonly do that to pay the bills.” The elevator reached her floor, the doors opened, and she preceded him out and down the hall. She stuck her key in her front door. “This isn’t what you do for your spirit,” she said.
    â€œI suppose not,” he said. “What do you do, for your spirit?”
    She turned, looked at him over her shoulder, grinned. “Come on inside,” she said. “You want a beer?”
    He never got an answer to his question.
    He didn’t think of it until later, how odd it was that a woman could have such large breasts and yet be so thin you could count her ribs. He found her tan lines incredibly sexy, though, he’d never seen such a thing before. He tried to apologize after he came the first time. “You young guys,” she told him. “You’re always in such a hurry.” She held him there, kept him occupied until he came back to life, then she showed him things he had never dreamed of. It was like being in the hands of an accomplished mechanic, a technician who knew how to coax every last ounce of torque out of an engine. Tuco was nothing if not a student, he dropped his inhibitions on her floor next to his clothes and dived in. She did not, however, give up on her attempts to classify him, she would choose what seemed like the most inopportune moments to stop what the two of them were doing to ask him another question. “I should have put some music on,” she said, at one such time, holding him in a disbelieving state of suspended animation. “What kind of music do you like?”
    He held on, reeling. “Don’t need music,” he croaked. She laughed that teenage laugh of hers, and then she posed, a little bit, lay back on her pillows, looking like an adolescent’s wet dream, before she continued. She left no doubt in his mind, though, who was driving, and who was the passenger.
    She didn’t bother