Fishing the Sloe-Black River Read Online Free PDF

are tremendously white, but I notice her fingernails chewed down to the quick. The bell clangs and a couple of elderly Asians come in, followed by a man whom I recognize as a bartender down on Geary Street. Betty greets each of them with a fluttering wave.
    I move up and down the aisles, looking at prices, fingering the $3.80 in my pocket. Coffee is out of the question, as are the croissants in the bakery case, which are a dollar apiece. An apple tart might do the trick however. Walking down the rows of food, other breakfasts come back to me—sausages and rashers fried in a suburban Irish kitchen with an exhaust fan sucking up the smoke, plastic glasses full of orange juice, cornflakes floating on milk, pieces of pudding in circles on chipped white plates, fried tomatoes and toast slobbered with butter. In the background Gay Byrne would talk on on the radio, while my late mother draped herself over the stove, watching the steam rise from the kettle. Mornings spinning off on my Raleigh to lectures at University, a bar of Weetabix in my jacket pocket. Once, champagne and strawberries in Sausalito with a lover who clawed his brown moustache between his teeth.
    I reach for a small plastic jar of orange juice and a half dozen eggs in the deli fridge, two oranges and a banana from the fruit stand, then tuck a loaf of French bread under my arm. There is butter and jam at home, perhaps some leftover teabags. Betty sells loose cigarettes at twenty-five cents each. Two each for Enrique and me will do nicely. Tomorrow night, when I get my wages from the warehouse—Paulie will be there with his head bent over the checks morosely and some stray old fishermen will be coughing in from their boats—I will buy steak and vegetables. Not too much, though. Enrique has been having a hard time keeping his food down, and the blue bucket sits at the side of our bed, an ugly ornament.
    I cart the groceries up to the cash register, and Betty cocks an eye at me.
    â€œHow’s the patient?” she asks. “Haven’t seen hide nor hair of him in the last three weeks.”
    â€œStill holed up in bed.”
    â€œAny news?”
    â€œNone, I’m afraid.”
    She shakes her head and purses her lips. I reach into my pocket for the change. “Can I get four of your smokes please?”
    Betty reaches up above her for a box of Marlboro Lights and slides them on the counter, toward me. “My treat,” she says. “Don’t smoke ’em all at once, hon.” I thank her and tuck them quickly in my shirt pocket. Betty leans over the counter and touches my left hand: “And tell that man of yours I want to see his cute little Argentinian ass in here.”
    â€œHe’ll be up and at it in a few days,” I say, putting the groceries in a white plastic bag and hooking it over my wrist. “Thanks again for the smokes.”
    The door clangs behind me, and the street seems to open up in a wide sweep. Twenty cigarettes can make a man’s day. I skip through the chalk marks—it’s been years since I’ve hop-scotched—and sit down on the curb, between a green Saab and an orange pickup truck, to light up. Looking down the street I can make out our balcony, above the tops of the cars, but there’s no sign of Enrique.
    *   *   *
    Last night he almost cried when the cocaine coagulated in his sweat, but I scooped some off his belly and onto the mirror. He pushed it away and turned his face to the wall, looked up at a photograph of himself rafting the Parana River. The photo is fading now, yellowing around the edges. The way he leans forward in the boat, going down through a rapid, with his paddle about to strike the water, looks ineffably sad to me these days. He hasn’t been near a river in years and hasn’t gone outside for almost a month.
    In the apartment we have unrolled our sleeping bags and use them as blankets over the bedsheets. Our television set is in