The Quiet Streets of Winslow Read Online Free PDF

them stalked her for amonth—followed her to the RV and drove past it daily, she said, until I happened to be there, one afternoon, and he saw me. Another customer had seemed decent and kind to her, at first. She had become friendly with him, just as she had become friendly with me, and one afternoon she walked outside with him and got into his car—a new red Altima, she said it was. She sat in his car because it was cold outside and she told him about Hannah and what a private detective would cost and he said, “Let me help you,” and he gave her $50, and the next day he came into the restaurant and said he would give her another fifty if she would sit in his car again. She considered it, she told me. She said that for five minutes it didn’t occur to her that he could speed off in the car with her in it. The possibility just didn’t come into her mind.
    That was how Jody was—naive and a little unintelligent. And maybe, for reasons I didn’t understand, she looked for trouble. Plus she knew how to utilize her looks. She’d adjust her smile depending on the kind of man she was waiting on. I would tell her, “You don’t have to make a prostitute of yourself to make a living,” and she would say, “It’s not called being a prostitute. It’s called being a waitress.” When it came to that subject and many others, I would try and explain my point of view to her, which she wasn’t interested in hearing. If my thoughts didn’t agree with hers, she was certain I was wrong. She just assumed it. It was irritating, as it would have been for anybody. I was smarter than she was, and she couldn’t see it. But I was also sorry for her because of it. It was complicated, how we were with each other. I could never simplify it to myself.
    She was sad a lot of the time. If we were having a rum and Coke together, she would start to talk about Hannah and want more to drink so that she could feel sadder still—that was how it seemed to me. Shetold me about her mother becoming an addict, and about how she—Jody—started stealing a few pills, then a few more. She told me about her father leaving them for a woman who ended up trying to stab him at a Burger King with a plastic knife. Jody would laugh when she got to that part of the story, then she would cry when she got to the ending, which was that a year after the woman abandoned her father, her father had a heart attack and died and four days went by before anybody found him. Four days, she said.
    I tried to respect Jody’s emotions even if that meant forgetting my own. I asked her how she felt and pretended to listen to the long answers. Sometimes resentment dug a hole in me, and it was difficult not to fall into it since I used to do all right, living by myself—not happy, but not lonely. It’s the crowd that makes you lonely. I was all right with the life I had, not expecting more, not mourning what I didn’t have or hadn’t had in the past. But most of the time, with Jody, I sidestepped resentment and was kinder to her than anybody else had been. And I tried to teach her things.
    Ernest Sterling said that every moment of your life you should think about the fact that you weren’t dead. Like when you were eating a hot dog or barreling down a highway, you should remember, Life. I have it , and not ask for anything more. When I said that to Jody she said she would kill herself, thinking that way. She would want to kill herself every minute; why would I put a thought like that in her head? She couldn’t see that I was trying to help her. She couldn’t see that there was another way to look at your life and another way to feel. It was like she refused to think deeply or use her imagination.
    She had a childish side that pulled at you when she was sitting alone with her feet tucked under her, or when she was standing quietlyfor a moment, at a window. You would wonder what her