Waste Read Online Free PDF Page B

want you to know I thank you every day for the money you provide my family.’”
    â€œKind of formal, isn’t it?” Jamie said.
    He sat on Brock’s bed and tried to avoid knocking over half-full containers of Chinese food and McDonald’s Happy Meal toys Brock had lined up on the floor like soldiers.
    â€œWell, basically she’s saying, ‘Let’s knock boots, big man, thanks for un-fucking up my mangled mouth.’”
    Jamie checked his watch and rocked back and forth on the bed. The longer he sat still, the more he felt each muscle knotting itself tighter and tighter around his bones. Getting out of the car had taken fifteen minutes and he still couldn’t turn his neck all the way to the right. Brock’s splayed smile stared back at him. Half his teeth were missing after Monday night’s bottle accident.
    â€œFace it, you’re going to end up marrying that broad and having three little babies with her and moving in with the family and making the pilgrimage see to the Pope and learning the deep, dark secrets of pierogi magic.”
    â€œShut up, Garrison.”
    Jamie kicked a foot out and sent a bunch of Fraggle Rock toys flying into a corner stacked with dirty underwear. Brock winced but didn’t say anything.
    â€œWhy do you collect these little buggers, anyway?” Jamie said.
    â€œHappy Meals are cheap as fuck. For three bucks, I get a whole meal.”
    â€œYeah, but you don’t need to—whatever. I brought this over.”
    Jamie flapped the battered piece of paper in Brock’s face.
    â€œYou remember him, right? The little wiener from back when we lived on Olive.”
    â€œWhich guy?”
    â€œThe guy with the—you know, ‘Don’t Be a Loner, Wrap Your Boner’—that guy?”
    â€œThe chick with the hot dog and her grandma? That’s just a story, you know that, right? If you’re thinking of the chick, or maybe it was a dude, who knows, but the one with the broom stick? Now I know for a fact that that happened. Girl fell right off the fridge. Impaled.”
    â€œNo, he’s a fucking guy, Brock. Took the bus with us. Little bitch who almost got me booted out of high school, the one with the—”
    â€œOh, shit, you mean Condom,” Brock said.
    â€œYes, yes, exactly, that’s the dude. The dude just disappeared off the planet,” Jamie said. “I figured he killed himself or something, like years ago, but apparently he was still kicking around here somewhere. Until this.”
    â€œUntil what?” Brock asked.
    â€œJust read the fucking article.”
    Brock spent every night from four until midnight slugging boxes of booze down at the liquor warehouse. The place had always looked like a deserted hangar bay to Jamie, even back when he was working there on the day shift. Brock would drive home at night covered in beer and gin, avoiding major intersections and the highway in case he got pulled over, but he always failed to wash his pants till the weekend. T-shirts covered in abstract splashes of red wine and vermouth sat in piles till Brock could no longer leap over them.
    â€œYou ever think of buying hangers?” Jamie said.
    â€œI’m trying to read here, stop screwing with me,” Brock said.
    Jamie swung his feet back and forth over the islands of Chinese food on the floor. They were about the only bones in his body that did not hurt. He closed his eyes. Alisha was supposed to call him about the kid again tonight. And Scott still wanted him out in a couple weeks, and the meat shop was going to call him in for another shift. Behind all these thoughts lurked the lion with its rib cage split open and its intestines spooling out across the pavement. Its eyes were open.
    â€œIt is the Condom. Goddamn,” Brock said. “What a knob. You remember when he cried ’cause we told him yogurt was just elephant jizz, and—shit, what did one of the girls say to