A Strange Commonplace Read Online Free Page B

live with him, nor, for that matter, did she ever visit or even call him. Ray once mentioned that she’d become pregnant by some guinea bastard truck driver, but, thank God, miscarried, no doubt because of her drinking and carrying on with any son of a bitch with a phony smile, a few bucks, and a car. Her father seemed to agree with him, although the brothers had grown distant, to say the least, over the years, and when Warren died, some six months after his daughter’s premature death, Ray sent a floral spray to the funeral home, but attended neither the wake nor the burial. The sateen sash across the arrangement read, in glistening gold letters on a dark red field, OLD HAIRPIN , bewildering the mourners, who were few indeed. Ray, a widower soon after Warren’s death, was found one day dead in his shabby apartment, sitting in a battered, sprung easy chair in his pajamas and overcoat, a stained homburg on his head and an unopened pack of Lucky Strikes on his lap. He had died intestate, and after probate settlement and taxes and surrogate’s court fees, his son, Warren, a gunnery sergeant with almost thirty years in the Corps, got about $240,000. Warren had never married, so this money and his military pension most probably assured him a comfortable retirement in Oldsmar, Florida, a Tampa suburb which, or so I understand, is a pleasant enough town.

A Small Adventure
    S HE DECIDED TO LEAVE THE LITTLE PARTY AND HER husband and a lot of friends she’d known for years to their drinking and flirting and groping and give herself over to this unkempt man whose kinky red hair was dull with dirt and oil. She’d seen him many times in downtown bars, always seedy, always with a superior, slightly mocking smile on his face, always with a battered black spring binder, crammed with tattered papers, held closely against his side. He smelled faintly of fish. When they got off the elevator and reached the street, he put his fingers to his mouth and whistled once, the sound producing, from a small areaway across the street, a young black man with the face of a regularly battered prize fighter. He was dressed in an expensive dark suit that needed cleaning and pressing, and the collar of his white shirt was black with filth. The men nodded at each other and she smiled and said “hello” to the black man in an absurdly cheery tone. The men flanked her and they walked quickly down the block, then abruptly turned into the hallway of an old walk-up, where she was decisively steered up three cracked and stained marble steps and through an unlocked door into a little airless vestibule lit by one amber lightbulb that revealed a crusted and worn maroon carpet, on which were centered a wicker table with a smudged and sticky glass top and two matching chairs. The men stepped back and looked at her, and the black man made an impatient gesture toward her belly, while the white man put his spring binder on the table. She looked away from them, then carefully, modestly, reached under her skirt and pulled her panties down and then off, easing them past her high heels. She put them on top of the spring binder, turned her back on the men, and bent over the table, complaisant, settling her forearms on its surface. She closed her eyes as she felt hands pushing up her skirt and slip to her waist. It struck her suddenly as strange that this building should be so shabby and uncared for on this very nice block so close to the park. One of the men was in her and she gasped.

Another Small Adventure
    S OME STRANGE MAN WAS GIVING IT TO HER FROM BEHIND and anybody could walk into the hallway and see them there. She was too drunk and drugged to understand much, and maybe they were in a bathroom. The black-and-white tile floor appeared to slide and shift on either side of her shoes; they were clean tiles. Her husband was with some slut half his age at the party, maybe, and turnabout is only something. Baby, baby, oh baby, the man whispered, and she could feel him