The End Read Online Free PDF Page B

show. He waited—liking himself a little because he wasn’t afraid—for the boom and then the nothing. He commanded kitty to come keep Papa warm, but she refused him and refused him until, acquiescing, she levitated onto the bed and gave Rocco a kiss on his chin. “Here it comes,” he told her. Nothing in reality was as terrible as in his nightmares.
    And wouldn’t you know. No boom. Why, it wasn’t any atomical cataclysm.
    Outside, the paper-rags man bawled his plea that Vermilion Avenue bring out its old paper and old rags. His nag clip-clopped. His nag clip-clopped. The dray wheels rasped along the sandy pavement bricks.
    Rocco pissed, he showered, he shaved, he boiled his coffee, he toasted his toast. His brood would not recognize the toaster once they returned, but he hoped they would appreciate that he had otherwise maintained the furnishings they knew.
    Mindful of the August daytime heat, he decided to defer the start of his drive until the cool of the evening. In the meanwhile he put on his good duds—a coal-colored, faintly pinstriped three-piece suit and shiny brogues—folded a square of toilet paper for his breast pocket, and went out.
    Hair swept back and tonicked, cup and saucer in hand, he now made his way toward the bakery to take in the mob scene that, he was confident, awaited him there. A seething pile of shoppers was what he had in mind, all of them deep in perplexity as to why the Lord was visiting upon them this particular deprivation on this unexceptional morning. Rocco was always, but always, open, such that they seldom thought of Rocco, did they? They presumed that there was ever Rocco with anise cookies at Christmastime, and in February with the glazed sugar mounds that have the red candies on top and are supposed to recall Saint Agatha’s tits.
    He made the turn off Thirtieth onto the Eleventh and, look, indeed, below him down the slope the crowd had amassed. The reality of what he’d incited was far worse than what he’d hoped for. Sixty in total had been his thought. This was easily two hundred.
    He changed his mind. He was almost out of coffee already, and he wanted to go to the bathroom, and he decided to go home.
    Yet his body continued its forward progress down the hill toward the squirming horde. Nobody had seen him, or at least nobody had recognized him yet. Already he missed his own company. He wanted deeply to go home and to sit on the can and for nobody to know he was there.
    A boy on roller skates flew by on his right. The head was lowered like he was a halfback charging the line. The skate key on a string around his neck bounced on his back. He was wailing nonsense. His acceleration was impressive. He was aimed straight for the horde, on a collision course, perhaps randomly, with Lenny Tomaro.
    Rocco was almost part of them now.
    The boy hit Lenny from behind and fell backward onto the black-top. Lenny kicked him a few times, tappingly, sort of motheringly, in his ribs, but the crowd paid no notice. Rocco was among them, but they didn’t know it. He heard himself humming “Bye Bye Blackbird” as he sauntered through their midst. On their knees on the sidewalk, two girls in pinafores played jacks with a yellow rubber ball. Next to them twin boys worked a jigsaw puzzle on the concrete. Radios chirped from shops with their doors propped open. Nobody, maybe, recognized him with the nice duds and no flour in the mustache and no paper hat over the hair. He heard his name spoken but not in such a way that anyone was calling out for him.
    Somebody said, “I only let them stay because the girl got bit by rats, plural, at the other place.” Somebody said, “I can tell you this, I can tell you this, he begged me. And I can tell you also the words which I used when I gave him his answer.” Somebody said, “We saw there was a line, so we got in.” Somebody said, “It says Continued on B-twenty-four, but you didn’t bring B-twenty-four, did you?” From light post to light post