Corrections to my Memoirs by Michael Kun

Author:Michael Kun [Kun, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59692-908-1
Publisher: M P Publishing Limited
Published: 2006-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

PUBLISHER’S NOTE

We just paid twenty-five grand for that story.

Jesus Christ, this is getting ridiculous.

DID SHE JUMP OR WAS SHE PUSHED

Though it fit as if it were, Jules Matthewman’s argyle vest was not his own. Nor was his Burberry overcoat for that matter. They used to be Mackie’s, and their father’s before that, and he’d noticed that evening, as he buttoned the coat up against the February wind, that two of the buttons were missing, the top one and the second one from the bottom. The top one was the more troublesome, and he held the coat closed at the collar with his left hand to keep from getting a chill. His right hand he stuck in the coat’s huge side pocket, and, surprised to learn that it wasn’t empty, he removed the contents to find the two brown buttons and a ticket stub for the Brooklyn Symphony Orchestra, November 28, 1979. The buttons he put back in his pocket, and he dropped the stub into the snow, as dark and watery as oatmeal, burying it with the toes of his loafers. He checked his watch: 6:25.

There were a half dozen other people at the bus stop, all wrapped up against the cold, all having done a better job of it than Jules, and he’d been paying only the slightest attention to them, thinking instead of his phone call from his father and of Trace, who was to meet him at the Port Authority building at 8:15.

“Trace,” he’d said, calling her at work, “I need a place to stay tonight. Just one night, I promise. It’s my father.” There was no one else to call in New York since Mackie and Kate had moved to Cincinnati, no one he knew well enough to ask, and he had neither the money to afford one of the better hotels nor the patience to tolerate the seedier ones downtown. Plus, it had been nearly six weeks since he’d seen her last, since she came to pick up her furniture.

“Of course, Jules. Let me know where I should pick you up.” He’d been surprised that she’d said yes, and he didn’t know whether it was because she wanted to see him or because he’d said it was about his father.

Jules shook his head side to side in an exaggerated way, then let out a laugh almost girlish in its pitch, wondering about it.

An old woman with crazy, white hair, her face sympathetic and neatly round, was nearest Jules. With navy yarn, she was knitting what looked to be a scarf, and one of the same color was turned twice around her own neck. Concentrating on the movement of her needles, the woman lifted her head on occasion to inspect the traffic. A grandmother, Jules guessed, going to visit her son and daughter-in-law. He liked to do that. He liked to try to figure out who people were, piecing together little clues like a detective. The navy yarn was what made him think that she had a son, not a daughter, though the scarf could be for a grandson.

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