Very Old Bones Read Online Free PDF

said.
    “I don’t think he meant baptism,” said Peg. “Do you?”
    “I don’t know what he means sacrament,” Billy insisted.
    “No more profane love in the afternoon, maybe? Make it sacred?”
    “You’d better watch what you say,” Agnes said.
    “You better organize this act you’ve got going here,” Peg said. “And you too,” she said to Billy “I really don’t give a rap what the priest says, or the
bishop either. This is our house and we do what we like in it. But I think you ought to make a decision about your own lives for a change. I’ve got to get to work.” She bolted her
coffee and stood up.
    “I’ll call about supper,” she told Agnes. “I’ve got that luncheon with Peter and Orson. The lawyer’s picking me up and I suppose the whole gang will be there.
I want to go down early and help with the lunch.”
    “We’ve got a roasting chicken and lamb chops,” Agnes said.
    “Better be careful about lamb chops,” George Quinn said, coming through the swinging door into the kitchen. “That’s why Annie had her stroke. Always showin’ off
eatin’ lamb-chop fat.”
    “I’m going where there’s no lamb chops,” Peg said. She gave George a quick kiss and went out.
    The phone rang and George, the closest to it, answered: “Hello there, who’s calling this early? . . . Who? . . . Oh, yeah . . . Well, no, Peg’s gone to work.
Any message? . . . Yeah, Billy’s right here,” and he handed Billy the phone with the words, “It’s Orson, that floo-doo.”
    “What’s the prospect, Orson?” Billy said into the phone.
    “I need to get out of this goddamn house,” I said. “What are you up to?”
    “I gotta go to the doctor’s.”
    “When?”
    “This morning.”
    “I’ll take you,” I said.
    “What’s your problem down there?” Billy asked.
    “It’s a big day today. I need to get out from under for a while.”
    “So come have breakfast and we’ll go down to Sport Schindler’s for an eye-opener. I gotta meet a guy there owes me money.”
    “Always a pleasant prospect,” I said. “I’ll see you in five minutes.”
    “You can’t get here sooner?”
    George Quinn sprinkled a teaspoon of sugar on his eggs, his tie tied tight on his lightly starched collar on this day that was headed into the high nineties: sartorial
propriety, impervious to weather.
    “So how’s the numbers business, George?” I asked as I sat across the breakfast table from him and Billy.
    “It don’t exist,” George said.
    “What?”
    “Where you been, Orson?” Billy said. “George has been out of business for a year.”
    “I thought that was temporary,” I said.
    “A few of the big boys went to work by phone after it all closed down. But not me,” George said.
    “I blame Dewey for starting it,” Billy said. “That son of a bitch, what the hell’s the town gonna do without numbers? Without Broadway.”
    “Broadway? Broadway’s not gone.”
    “It ain’t gone,” Billy said, “but it ain’t got no life to it. You can’t get arrested on Broadway anymore. Town is tough as Clancy’s nuts. Even if you
get a bet down you don’t know the payoff. No phone line with the information anymore. You gotta wait for tomorrow’s newspaper. I blame Kefauver.”
    “Forget I asked,” I said. “Tell me about the house, George. Peg says you may buy this place after all these years.”
    “Peg said that?”
    “She said you might cash an insurance policy. Seven grand for this house sounds like the bargain of the century.”
    “Not buyin’,” George said.
    “It’s fifteen hundred down,” Billy said.
    “Fifteen hundred down the bowl,” George said. “Who’s got money to buy houses when you’re seventy-one years old? I’m not waitin’ for my ship to come in.
It’s not comin’ and I know it.”
    “What’re you gonna do, move?” I asked.
    “Yeah. We’ll find a place.”
    “Probably not at this rent,” Billy said.
    “Then we’ll pay what it takes,” George said.
    “Why