Sunset Park Read Online Free PDF Page A

trouble.
    “I messed up, okay? We don’t need to get into the details.”
    “Raymond,” Michael said, his tone warning. He pushed back from the table, hands braced along the edge. “¿Qué pasó, carajo?”
    “¿Qué te importa?”
    Michael was out of his seat so fast the chair flipped backward and crashed to the floor. David flinched.
    “¿Cómo que ‘qué te importa’?”
    I shoved my plate away and watched Michael combust. “Look, calm down—”
    “Hijo de la gran puta, coño—”
    “I’m not telling you shit if you’re going to curse at me the whole time!”
    “Then tell me what happened!”
    This time I was the one who flinched. Having him scream at me in front of David and Nunzio should have fired up the fuck-you chip in my brain, but I just wanted to disappear. Sink into the floor. Rewind twenty minutes and drag David out the front door instead of into this disaster.
    Michael paced the kitchen like a caged animal, breath coming out in harsh bursts. I hazarded a look at him again and felt worse. The guy was digging his hands into his hair and squeezing his eyes shut like the apocalypse had come. Maybe being trapped in this house with me was the equivalent for him.
    “I don’t want to talk about it.” I sounded small and weak, and if that wasn’t bad enough, there was a suspicious tickle at the back of my throat. My leg hopped up and down until David reached under the table and put his hand against my knee. He squeezed.
    “The dispatcher was giving preference to the other casuals.” David met Michael’s eyes, and he lied right through his perfect teeth. I tried not to do a double take. He’d asked me a million questions about my short career as a longshoreman, but I’d thought he was being polite rather than retaining the information. “The guy who got Ray in at first—Rolly or whatever—kept telling him to get his TWIC card and to start the process to become unionized, but he slacked off and stopped getting preference if Rolly wasn’t the one making the calls.”
    “David,” Michael gritted out, “I do not understand a word you are saying to me.”
    I imagined that David was judging him for not paying more attention to my initial overexcited rambling about the job. Funny how he could look haughty about his superior longshoreman knowledge while stroking my thigh under the table. It reminded me of the way Nunzio had caressed Michael last night, before they’d gotten hot and heavy on the leather.
    I pulled away, but David was not deterred. He dropped his arms on the table and kept talking, willing to act as my proxy regardless of my acceptance of his affection.
    “Do you understand how his job worked, Michael?” he asked with a look of tried patience.
    Nunzio choked on his coffee. I didn’t blame him. I was waiting for a rowdy Rodriguez explosion, but Michael swallowed David’s condescending tone with obvious practice. He looked calmer. Maybe they were role-playing—doing the team leader/team member thing, so Michael would talk rationally like they were at work, instead of rampaging at me like a beast.
    “I understood that he either went in or called the hiring hall every day to see if they needed him, and I know it wasn’t guaranteed work, but for months it sure seemed like he was doing well for himself. So, again Raymond, what the hell happened?”
    Me screwing up had happened. Not applying for my government credentials had only been part of it—I could have worked for a while without it. But I’d been too impatient to wait for work when Rolly wasn’t the one dispatching jobs to the docks, and I’d started fumbling my shift when someone called me unexpectedly, because I’d already started getting high for the day. Rolly had handed me an easy way into a competitive job, and I’d returned on the investment with immature bullshit. I didn’t need anyone else to tell me that, but Michael would rant about my irresponsibility until Christmas just to beat it into my head and make