Waiting for Joe Read Online Free PDF

evening, would you please call through the desk? The supervisor will be there. She’d like to talk to you.”
    “Your chest?” Joe says when Alfred comes back on the telephone.
    “Yah. Smoke eighty-some years, what else could it be?”
    “You should have said something sooner about wanting brandy, Dad. I’d have brought you some.”
    “I didn’t want it sooner.”
    He’ll get in touch with the liquor store in Osborne Village, they’ll deliver. There’s still enough room on the one credit card to make that happen.
    “Let me see what I can do,” Joe says.
    “Good. I’ll have a shot of it before going to bed, maybe it’ll warm me up.”
    “Talk to you later, Dad,” Joe says.
    He’s barely pocketed the cell when Pete is at his side.“We’re not working today. Probably we won’t get any more hours.”
    “You saw the boss?” Joe scans the parking lot for the man’s SUV.
    “He’s not in yet. That’s how come I know. He’d be here if we was to work. After you left last night the university kids came by. They’re done writing exams. It’s supposed to warm up this week, and as soon as it does, the boss will hire his son and his pals. Same as last year.” He grins, reaming the space where his front teeth should be with the tip of his tongue.
    The windows across the front of the store reflect the sky, Pete’s truck, which looks cumbersome and top-heavy with its unpainted plywood cabana, the solitary lawn chair set beside it, Joe and Pete. Joe is a head taller, and near to ten years older, but he looks younger. He can’t see into the store to know whether or not the lights are on at the customer service desk.
    “What do you say I buy you a coffee?” Pete says.
    Joe concentrates on Pete’s forehead to avoid looking at the wet space between his teeth. He doesn’t particularly want to spend time with Pete, but going for a coffee will delay his return to the Meridian and the decision about what to do next.
    “You’re on,” he says.
    He waits as Pete folds up the lawn chair, unlocks the aluminum door on the cabana and tosses the chair onto what appears to be a narrow cot covered in a red blanket. He shuts the door quickly but not before Joe has seen an assortment of tools hung on the walls on either side of the small window above the cot. “Home sweet home,” Pete says with an apologetic grin.
    “You live in that?”
    “Sometimes.” Pete turns away toward Albert Street and Joe notices for the first time his bowlegged gait. His jeans are too long and his heels have worn holes through the backs of both pant legs. Joe catches up to him and together they wait on the boulevard for a break in the traffic.
    Pete casts him a sideways glance that takes him in from head to foot. “Where’re you from?”
    “Winnipeg,” Joe says with reluctance, knowing that he’s opened the door to the questions Pete’s been burning to ask.
    “So, you’re visiting, or what?”
    “Visiting,” Joe replies and waits for the next question. Why would a person in his situation be working as casual labour? But Pete remains silent as they cross the street and approach Robin’s Donuts. Two women shiver with cold as they perch on the edges of wrought-iron chairs on either side of the door, smoking cigarettes.
    “Don’t you say a thing,” one of the women warns Pete with mock severity, her eyes hidden behind white-framed sunglasses, her mouth a wilted pucker of rose.
    “Don’t need to,” Pete says and smiles at her. “Amanda here is trying for a Guinness World Record for the number of times a person has tried to quit,” he tells Joe.
    The smell of coffee and the din of male voices in Robin’s Donuts are familiar. Men of all ages are crammed thigh to thigh around the small square tables, just as they would be in Pauline’s diner at this time of the day. As Joe makes his way to the back of the room several of them give him the once-over before returning to their newspapers and laptops, their heated opinions about