The Times Are Never So Bad Read Online Free PDF

about it, years later, telling it like it was something cute she and her pals did, I didn’t think it was funny, though I was supposed to. There are five cars spread around the lot. I don’t know what he’s driving, so I just sit watching the door, but he stays inside, the fucker getting his free drinks and sitting on a barstool watching the sweeping and table-wiping and the dirty ashtrays stacking up on the bar and the bartender washing them. Maybe he’s making it with one of the waitresses, which I hope he isn’t. I do not want to kick his ass with a woman there. If he comes out with a bartender or even both of them, it’s a problem I can handle: either they’ll jump me or try to get between us, or run for the phone; but I’ll get him. With a woman, you never know. Some of them like to watch. But she might start screaming or crying or get a tire iron and knock the back of my head out my nose.
    He comes out with three women. The women are smoking, so I figure they just finished their work and haven’t been sitting around with a drink, they’re tired and want to go home. A lot of people don’t know what a long, hard job that is. I’m right: they all stand on the little porch, but he’s not touching any of them, or even standing close; then they come down the steps and one woman heads for a car down on the left near the road, and the other two go to my right, toward the car at the high end of the lot, and he comes for the one straight ahead of him, off to my left maybe a couple of hundred feet. The TransAm: I should have known. I’m out the door and we’re both walking at right angles to his car. He looks at me once, then looks straight ahead. Headlights are on his blue suit, and the two women drive down and pass behind him; the other one is just getting to her car, and she waves and they toot the horn, and turn onto the road. I get to the car first and plant myself in front of it and watch his chain. It’s gold and something hangs from it, a disc of some kind.
    â€˜Ray,’ he says, and stops. ‘How’s it going, Ray?’ His voice is smooth and deep in his throat, but I can see his eyes now. They look sad, the way scared eyes do. His skin is dark and he is hairy and his shirt is unbuttoned enough to show this, and the swell of his pecs. I think of Alex, and look at Vinnie’s hands down by his jacket pockets; I’m looking at his face too, and I keep seeing the gold chain, a short one around his neck so the disc shows high on his chest. My legs are shaky and cool and I need a deep breath, but I don’t take it; I swing a left above the chain, see it hit his jaw, then my right is there in his face, and I’m in the eye of the storm, I don’t hear us, I don’t feel my fists hitting him, but I see them; when my head rocks he’s hit me; I hit him fast and his face has a trapped look, then he’s inside my arms, grabbing them, his head down, and I turn with him and push him onto the car, his back on the hood. There is a light on his face, and blood; I hold him down with my left hand on his throat and pound him with the right. There is a lot of blood on his mouth and nose and some on his forehead and under an eye. He is limp under my hand, and when I let him go he slides down the hood and his back swings forward like he’s sitting up, and he drops between me and the grill. He lies on his side. My foot cocks to kick him but I stop it, looking at his face. The face is enough. The sky feels small, like I could breathe it all in. Then I look into the light. It’s the headlights of the waitress’s car; the one alone; it’s stopped about twenty feet away with the engine running and the lights aimed at me. She’s standing beside the car, yelling. I look around. Nobody else is in the lot; it feels small too. I look down at DeLuca, then at her. She’s cursing me. I wave at her and walk to my jeep. She is calling me