The Washington Square Ensemble by Madison Smartt Bell

Author:Madison Smartt Bell [Bell, Madison Smartt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction, Historical, Urban Life, Literary, Contemporary Fiction, Urban, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
ISBN: 9781453237458
Amazon: B0069W0HVA
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2011-12-05T11:00:00+00:00

Porco

“SO WHAT YOU’RE SAYING is, he’s a guy with no conscience, right?” Whelan says. “And that makes him happy, well I think that’s great. Me, I’d rather be unhappy, I think, that’s what it takes.”

“So would I, if it comes to that,” I say. And saying it, in fact, I do feel very unhappy. I don’t have a good snappy answer, I’m losing my chain of thought. I’m tired and I’m drunk and I wish there was some place I could go to and sleep for a while, just some place, not a hotel, not some jerk that owes me a favor, well, no use thinking about that. I’m not the only one, for sure, I can feel the Stone, dragging my coat pocket down, the weight of all that unvoiced misery. Happy people have nothing to say for themselves, after all. Wake up, here we go again.

“It’s the wave of the future though,” I say. “There’s more and more people like that running around, they’ll put us all out of business in another hundred years or so.”

“I don’t get you,” Whelan says. “Guys like that, don’t give a damn, they’ve always been around. I used to deal with them in a business way, you know, down at the precinct. And I could walk down this street and round up a couple of dozen right now.”

“Not like him,” I say. “There’s a difference, try to understand.” But it hardly seems worth trying to explain it, maybe I don’t understand it myself. Maybe I’m wrong.

“I’m trying,” Whelan says. “But I can’t do it, is all. You got a guy, small-time wise guy, or ex-wise guy if you say so, not that I believe that—what’s different about him? What’s he got the rest of them don’t?”

“Nothing is what,” I say. “A whole lot of nothing. He’s got nothing on his mind, you know, and that gives him a good imagination. There’s not so much already sitting there, so he can put whatever else in he wants to. Very good at forgetting things too, he is.”

“I’ll back you on that one,” Whelan says. “Got some things to forget, I think.”

“Oh, that,” I say, and I try to wave the remark away with my hand. But my hand just flops down on the bar like a dead bird. “I don’t care about that, beside the point. Those things he used to be into were just around for him to be into, an accident. If something else had been around he would have been in that instead. And I didn’t even know him then. I don’t think about that, I doubt he does either.”

“Sure he doesn’t,” Whelan says. “There’s some people that do though. There’s some people that remember him, I think.”

“Maybe there are,” I say. “Though from what you tell me and what I pick up, a lot of them are dead. Gone and forgotten about as far as he’s concerned.”

“Sure, that’s always been the way. Somebody making difficulties, something happens to him, he’s not around anymore.

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