On the Nickel Read Online Free PDF Page B

black plastic bags inside the do’. Take what you want, it all dead man stuff. Toss ‘em in the hall when you done.’
    Coming out of the master bedroom, they’d caught Maeve on the phone to somebody she obviously didn’t want them to know about because she’d hung up immediately. ‘Gottagobye. Good morning, Dad. Glor.’
    ‘You’ve got the most transparent guilty look in North America,’ Gloria said.
    SPANK HER AND THROW HER OUT, Jack Liffey wrote and showed it to Maeve instead of Gloria.
    ‘Dad! I’m almost of age. You can’t be spanking me unless you get me to Saudi Arabia first.’
    Gloria tipped the pad back with one finger to read it and laughed. ‘I’m not in a spanking or a cooking mood here, but I’ll set out some tortillas and leftovers, and there’s the usual cereals. In your honor, hon, we actually bought some Pop-Tarts.’
    It was the one junk food that Maeve seemed to have brought with her from her childhood.
    Jack Liffey pointed to WHO CALLED on his master list.
    ‘Nothing important, Dad,’ Maeve said. ‘You gotta get over thinking I’m always up to something.’
    It took him a while to scribble WHEN DID THE POPE STOP WEARING A DRESS.
    ‘Hon,’ Gloria said to Maeve. ‘Whatever you’re doing, what’s the worst thing that could happen? Just tell us that.’
    ‘I could fail completely and feel like an idiot, I suppose.’
    ‘If you succeed, will somebody dynamite the house?’ It wasn’t an empty joke. Maeve’s bedroom in her mother’s house had been dynamited two months earlier by an aging disaffected surfer whom Maeve had inadvertently poked with the sharp stick of her curiosity, trying as usual to help.
    She tore open the foil packet and dropped two frosted raspberry Pop-Tarts into the vintage Toastmaster, and pressed the deco handle down. ‘How did you know I love this flavor?’
    ‘Somebody’s definitely changing the subject here. You promise that there’s no risk at all of catastrophe in what you’re up to?’
    ‘Oh, no. Of course not.’
    SHE HAS NO NOTION OF RISK. Jack Liffey showed this to Gloria.
    ‘Oh, I know.’ Gloria rested her hand tenderly on his shoulder in the wheelchair for a moment. ‘Not everything blows up, Jack. Damn few things, in my experience. Possibly she’ll get lucky this time and just fall out of a tree. Let’s all calm down and have breakfast.’
    Conor peered briefly into the big black trash bags but the old-man clothing and possessions looked so filthy and unpleasant that he twisted the bag necks and swung them both out into the hallway. His needs were few, in any case, and a dying old man would have little of interest to him. He needed a bed, some food, a place out of the cold and some time to think things over. Some time to write songs.
    He looked around. He had the bed he needed, a metal frame single bed with what looked like fresh institutional sheets and a prickly horse blanket, tucked with military tightness. There was a washbasin with only one tap and some serious rust stains. He’d already seen the tiny cookroom for the whole floor three doors along the hallway, with a beat-up microwave, a double electric hotplate and an old round-top fridge. A cockroach appeared to peek over the rim of the basin at him but insects had never bothered him.
    There was one wood chair tucked under a desk the size of a big handkerchief, parked in front of a window that looked out on a brick wall. An angle of old pipe was screwed into one corner of the room and had five wire hangers depended from it. Nothing about the room struck him as unacceptable or offensive. Just another place. The asceticism actually appealed to him.
    He extracted his current notebook from his duffle.
    NOTES FOR A NEW MUSIC
    Day 1
    OK, it’s now. Right now is Day 1 after the break in my normal drift. That big gillotine (spell?) blade fell across my life, maybe to make it into Before and After.
    I wonder if I’m being too obstinate about breaking with my parents. I have no permanent