The Life and Times of Benny Alvarez Read Online Free PDF

to distract me, but I wouldn’t let him off the hook. “Are you proud of me, Grandpa?” I said.
    He sighed deeply, then brushed some hair away from my eyes, as if admiring me. “Every day, Benny. You’re our Golden Boy.”
    â€œGolden Boy?”
    He laughed, stepping away a few feet. “Oh, you’re a pain-in-the-neck Alvarez, all right, but you have your mother’s grit and heart.”
    â€œThat’s not what I hear from everyone else.”
    â€œThen you’ll have to prove them wrong. But I trust my instincts. Just be yourself, Benny. The real trick is to be crafty, kind of like a boxer, learning when to punch and when to duck and dodge. As my father once said, ‘Trouble can’t hit a moving target.’”
    â€œTrouble, Grandpa?”
    He didn’t answer but instead asked for my five iron. “You need a stronger grip,” he said, positioning his hands around the top of the club’s shaft to demonstrate. “See what I mean?”
    I grabbed the club and followed his suggestion, happy to see the ball take flight toward the top of the net.

Aldo
    M y sister’s looking nervous this morning. Aldo’s picking her up for school, and he’s not one of my father’s favorite people. I think he wanted her first real boyfriend to be a clean-cut jock with a social conscience, but Aldo’s got long, stringy black hair and looks like an undertaker: black jeans, black Converse low basketball shoes, a black T-shirt with the name of some rock group on front, and a black jean jacket. I read somewhere that Albert Einstein had seven of the same outfits hanging in his closet, one for every day of the week, so he could focus on the meaning of the universe instead of worrying if the green tie went with the brown sports coat. Likewise, I imagine Aldo’s closet being a sea of black denim.
    What really drives my father bonkers, though, is that Aldo has a yellow tattoo of Tweety Bird on his neck. My father would’ve hated any tattoo, but Tweety Bird? What the heck is that about? We’re almost afraid to ask.
    Surprisingly, Aldo’s a good basketball player; actually, a great basketball player. He often shoots hoops with me, even though I make a point to frequently bust him because his cockiness rubs me the wrong way. Once, when I asked him why he didn’t play for the school team, he proudly said, “Team sports suck. Coaches suck. Been there, done that.” The next time I saw him I said, “Did you mean ‘suck’ as in ‘stinks’ or ‘rots’?”
    He smiled broadly, though it wasn’t a friendly smile, more like one of those I’m-about-to-smack-your-punk-behind smiles. “I meant sucks as in sucks,” he said.
    Ironically, Aldo’s cockiness is the only reason my father tolerates him. Anyone who goes against the status quo is okay with him. But he still can’t get past the tattoo. Also, the fact that Aldo is a drummer and lead vocalist in a band named the Cro-Magnons. You would’ve thought a guy who has a tattoo of Tweety Bird on his neck would’ve called his band the Flintstones, but Aldo told my parents they were looking for “something prehistoric, something primeval.” At the word “primeval,” my father’s eyeballs widened about a quarter of an inch, and even my mother flinched. It was downhill for Aldo after that. If he had said “archaic” or “antediluvian” instead of “primeval,” my parents wouldn’t have been so terrified for dear sweet Irene. But none of it mattered, anyway, because Aldo could’ve been a budding serial murderer and Irene would have turned him to the good side.
    I’m actually feeling sorry for her today, as she’s sitting nervously, waiting for Aldo to show. We have a wide-open kitchen attached to the family room. Irene’s at the kitchen table, checking her watch, pretending to flip through the