Joshua Then and Now Read Online Free PDF

“Didn’t I tell you?”
    And he knew, once the detectives had gone, what was coming. She would draw the living room blinds, switch off all the lights, and screw the red bulb into the lamp that had been adjusted to throb on and off, like a Christmas tree light. Then, while he rolled up the rug and cleared the center of the room of furniture, she would disappear into her bedroom to dig out her props. When she signaled with a rap on the door that she was ready, he would put on the record – Fats Waller playing “Snake Hips” – and he would whistle and stamp his feet.
    Joshua mounted his exercise bike, sprinting for five minutes. Then he got up to piss so he wouldn’t have to break off later in the middle of a thought, should he receive one. He cut his fingernails. He trimmed his nasal hairs. Then he descended into the kitchen to make himself a pot of tea. He wandered into the living room, where he scanned the
TV Guide
to see what the afternoon movie was, not that he was going to watch, no matter what was playing, but just in case he developed a headache and couldn’t work. Fair is fair. While he waited for the water to boil, he willed the phone to ring, summoning him somewhere. Picking up the phone himself, initiating an interruption, was strictly against the house rules.
    Maybe Sheldon would call again this morning, his cousin Sheldon Leventhal.
    When they had been kids he had seldom seen Sheldon, especially after the time he had been stashed with his unwilling family for a two-week stay. Sheldon’s family was both rich and respectable; Joshua had been determined to ingratiate himself, but events had conspired against him. Aunt Fanny, appalled to be lumbered with Joshua, had fixed a cot for him in the attic. Next to the maid’s room. “Hey,” he demanded, “what are you putting down a rubber sheet for?”
    Averting her eyes, Aunt Fanny said, “Little boys have been known to weewee in bed by mistake.”
    “I’m no baby, but. I’m eight years old. I wanna piss, I go to the can.”
    Aunt Fanny grabbed him, frog-marching him into the second-floor bathroom. An astonishing place. Shaggy white rugs everywhere, even on the toilet-seat cover. Do they walk on toilets in Outremont? And then Aunt Fanny washed his mouth out with soap. Lifebuoy. “And now you say, ‘I’m sorry for using such bad language, Aunt Fanny.’ ”
    He found plump, rosy-cheeked Sheldon curled over his electric train set on the floor of the furnished basement. “Can I play?” he asked.
    “There’s only one switch.”
    “We could take turns, fuck-face.”
    “I don’t want to.”
    Joshua reared back and gave the approaching Lionel train engine a swift kick, sending it crashing against the wall. Sheldon leaped up. Joshua feinted with his left and caught him coming in with a right cross, bloodying his nose, before Aunt Fanny could intervene.
    He was sent to bed without his supper, but the following evening he ate with the family. What a bunch. With all their money, the fruit in the bowl on the dining room table was made out of glass. Nibble it and you’d shit splinters. And the maid, for all her airs, didn’t even know how to set a table properly. He was given two of everything: knives, forks, large spoons.…
    Joshua had rarely seen Sheldon since he was a child, but he did remember that when he was twelve and got caught shoplifting at Eaton’s it was Sheldon’s father, not his, who came round to smooth his way out of there. Uncle Harvey had amazed Joshua, saying he hadn’t had a fortunate upbringing, but that things would change now, the Leventhals would take a hand. Sheldon was waiting in the back of the car, smirking, his flute case on his lap, and they were left alone together while his father went to speak to the plumbing contractor on one of his building sites, a sheaf of bills in his hand.“Hey, guess what,” Joshua said, giving him an elbow, “I just got nabbed stealing.”
    Sheldon looked resolutely out the window.
    “And