One Last Thing Before I Go Read Online Free PDF

ice-cream cone. You want one?”
    “Two ice-cream cones in one sitting? Seriously? What’s your cholesterol like?”
    “It’s a special occasion, right?”
    “Yeah. I’m going to go now.”
    “Did I say something wrong?”
    “Well, in your defense, there is no right thing to say.”
    “Will you let me help you?”
    “I might. Maybe you already have. I don’t know. I have to go be by myself and process all of this.”
    “If you decide on an abortion, I’ll take you, OK?”
    “There you go, stumping for the abortion again.”
    “I’m just saying, if you don’t want to involve your mom and Rich.”
    “Yeah, it would suck for you if Rich got to take me.”
    “I’m sorry I offered.”
    “Don’t be. I’d have written you off for good if you didn’t.”
    “Then why are you giving me shit for it?”
    “Because you deserve shit, Dad. Because you’re a shitty father, and just because you get to bail me out of this now, that doesn’t change anything.”
    “So I do get to bail you out?”
    “I was speaking hypothetically. In the event that you do.”
    “I understand. Can I at least drive you home?”
    “You don’t have a car.”
    “I use Jack’s.”
    “It’s OK. I have my own wheels.”
    “Since when?”
    “Mom and Rich got me a G35 for my graduation.”
    “That was nice of them.”
    “Mom’s still compensating for you. I milk it a little.”
    “I would. Can I ask you something?”
    “Sure.”
    “Why’d you come to me?”
    “Really?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I care less about letting you down.”

CHAPTER 7
    W hen she’sgone, he sits there, gutted like a fish. Casey has always been like that, so quick with the blade that only after she’s gone does the blood start to flow. They’d been sitting in Champs, the small coffee/sundry shop shoehorned into a kidney-shaped alcove in the back of the lobby. The shop is run by Pearl, a buxom Hungarian widow in her fifties who applies her makeup with a paintbrush and whose every move is punctuated by the rustle of nylons rubbing together and the Christmas jingle of a thousand golden bangles.
    “Your daughter,” Pearl says in her almost comically accented English as she rearranges the inventory of headache remedies behind the counter. Aspirin is a big seller at the Versailles.
    “Yes.”
    “Beautiful girl. Nice legs. She’s going to get herself in trouble with those legs. My Rafi, he was more of a tit man.” She pauses to indicate her own massive cleavage, bolstered by an unseen system of pulleys and straps that must have long since carved permanent tracks into her back. “But fashions change. Now it’s all about skinny girls with the legs. You better watch out. A boy sees those legs, all he thinks about is spreading them. Right?”
    “I’ll watch out.”
    She shrugs. “Nothing you can do. Kids going to do what they want, right?”
    “Right.”
    Through a quirk they could never trace, instead of calling him “Daddy,” Casey called him “My Daddy” when she first learned to speak. He can see her now, marching joyously across his and Denise’s bed in nothing but her diaper, her small, round belly poking out like the world’s tiniest beer gut, saying “My Daddy!” over and over again, her high, excited voice pealing with laughter when he made a grab for her ankles.
    “Hey, Silver. You okay?” Pearl asks him.
    Even if he could suck in enough oxygen to speak, he would have no idea how to answer.
    * * *
    He has lost so many things: his wife, his home, his dignity, and, most famously, his job as drummer and co-songwriter for the Bent Daisies. Pat, Ray, Danny, and he had begun playing together after high school; punk, post-punk, and then something a bit more full-throated, skating up to the edge of pop. They played the rock clubs up and down the East Coast, cutting demos whenever they could scrape the money together for studio time.
    Silver couldn’t remember a time he hadn’t been drumming. His mother always said she’d been able to feel him