Lifted by the Great Nothing: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

doorbell rang, and Rasheed went to answer.
    Max and Kelly stood silently, listening. Coach Tim could be heard saying, “I need my Wahl beard trimmer, Reed.”
    Rasheed said something back in a hushed tone.
    “Yeah,” Tim shouted, making sure everyone in the house could hear, “well, guess what, Reed? I need my Wahl beard trimmer.”
    Another admonishing, hushed retort from Rasheed.
    “Well,” Tim said, “if it’s not at my house, where the hell else would it be?”
    Rasheed could be heard scream-whispering, “What is your problem now? You don’t even have a beard. Come another time.”
    “I want it now, Reed. I’m not leaving without it.”
    Max had never heard them fight, and had certainly never heard Coach Tim whine like this. Normally, when he came over, it was to eat and watch sports. Rasheed would sit between him and Max on the couch and suddenly become more talkative. To distract himself from feeling eclipsed by Tim, Max got up to prepare snacks for them. Max also learned, and occasionally had to relearn, to be fine with never getting invited to help out with Tim’s house. Tim and Rasheed were aspiring fix-it men, and usually had some home-repair project in the works: tinkering with Tim’s leaky sinks, installing new tiles or a fence, painting, caulking, roofing, lighting, carpeting, etc. Max wondered why they only worked on Tim’s place. And why Rasheed wasn’t motivated to find the time to build the tree house himself. Anyway, Max told himself that when Rasheed and Tim were away together, it gave him more time to work on his own house stuff. Discover a new recipe, for example. He managed to see his aloneness as an opportunity more than anything.
    But while they argued now, Max couldn’t help but notice a light buzz of gratification move through him. He became a little hyper, maybe glad that they were clashing. No, that was wrong. That couldn’t be the reason he was glad. His gladness was probably thanks to Kelly. He looked up at her as she was biting her nails and agreed with himself that she was more likely the reason for his excitement. Rasheed stepped outside and closed the door so Max and Kelly only heard muffled arguing. He bragged a little about his father to her. Maybe when Rasheedcame back, he’d understand this to mean that his son supported his pursuit of romance with Kelly, and if she, by virtue of being a woman, had the power to eliminate sadness from his father’s life, then Max would do whatever he could to keep her around.
    “My dad saved a bird once,” he blurted.
    “Is that right?”
    The argument outside ended with Tim tramping across the front yard, repeating, “Fine, fine, you know what, fine.”
    Max continued. “The bird had a broken wing. It was on the sidewalk. It would have gotten eaten by cats. And he just picked it up and talked into its ear and threw it up in the air.”
    “And it flew off?”
    Rasheed marched back into the kitchen with his brow folded like an accordion.
    “Yes,” Max said to her, though that wasn’t how it happened. He now remembered that the bird actually came falling down like a clump of filthy rags.
    “The wing wasn’t broken, then?” she asked, looking at Rasheed.
    “No!” Max said. “Not anymore.”
    “What’s it?” Rasheed said, meaning What’s that?
    Then everyone looked at a different spot on the floor. After an eternity, she asked, “Do you have any music or anything?”
    Music, of course, music! Max and Rasheed rushed over to the one CD collection they had, a boxed set called If You Are American … Tim had given it to them a couple Christmases ago. They’d yet to open it.
    Though Rasheed didn’t listen to music, when Coach came over and they had enough vodka in them, he sometimes took out the copper flute he’d made years before with Tim’s welding gear. Tim said, “Oh, no, oh no, here he comes, it’s that time,” and Rasheed played something distantly similar to “Frère Jacques” as he skipped around the house,