Read Online Rag and Bone by Michael Nava - Free Book Online

you?”
    He wore a small gold hoop earring in his right ear, almost hidden by a graying lock of hair. I felt the glow of his physical vitality. Rarely had I met a person of such palpable warmth. It made me all the more aware of the chill of my ill-health.
    He took in my pajamas and bathrobe. “Am I catching you at a bad time?”
    “I was asleep.”
    He stood irresolutely at the door. “I thought maybe you might want to get a bite to eat.”
    “That sounds great, but can I take a rain check? I’m really not up to it.”
    He nodded. “Yeah. Hey, I’m really sorry if I woke you up.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” I said.
    “Okay, then. Later.”
    “Good-bye, John.”
    I stood in the doorway and watched him head down the driveway to his truck. There was something in the movement of his shoulders—the momentary droop of a small humiliation—that made me think this visit had not been as casual or as easy for him as he had made it sound. I thought about him driving off feeling bad because his kind impulse had been rejected, while I wandered back into my house for another long evening of dozing and waking and feeling sorry for myself.
    “Hey, John,” I said. “Wait a minute.”
    He turned around and walked back. “Yeah?”
    “Actually, I think it would do me good to get out of the house for a while.”
    “I won’t keep you out late.” He grinned. “I know this great place not too far from here.”
    “Come in for a second while I get dressed,” I said, and stood aside to let him pass.
    I angled my feet around the toolbox on the floor of the cab. A medallion of the Virgin of Guadalupe dangled from the rearview mirror, and stuck in the sun visor was a prayer card that depicted Michael the Archangel with a fiery sword and Satan prostrate at his feet. We rolled down the hill, past the red-faced Mormon kids, in the warm May twilight. A baseball game was playing on the radio in the background. He was telling me that he’d been hired at the house where he’d picked me up the other morning.
    “Should take about three months,” he said. “Damn!”
    “What’s wrong?”
    “Braves scored.”
    “What?”
    He glanced at me. “The game. Dodgers playing the Braves. You don’t follow baseball.”
    “Not since I was a boy,” I said. “I used to root for the Giants. You’re a big fan?”
    “I played,” he said, in a voice resonant with quiet pride. “Played in the minors for the Dodgers organization. I made it up to the bigs for two games. Four innings.”
    “That’s impressive.”
    With a self-deprecating grin, he said, “It was a long time ago, man. Twenty-five years.”
    “What position did you play?”
    “Pitcher,” he said. He took a sharp left turn off Santa Monica and pulled up to the curb in front of a brown stucco building with a tattered blue canopy over the door and a small red neon sign on the wall blinking the words MARIA’S RAMADA . “This is it.”
    Across the street was a long, three-story brick building with an institutional look. Over the door, however, was a bas relief depicting an angel.
    “What is that?” I asked, pointing to the building as we got out of the truck.
    “Nursing home,” John said.
    “That looks like a chapel, with the angel over the door.”
    “Could be,” he said. “I’ll have to ask my dad. He lived around here when he was a kid.”
    We headed toward the restaurant. “Did you grow up in this neighborhood?”
    “Me? No. I grew up in Pasadena. That’s where my parents moved after my dad started making money from his business.”
    “DeLeon and Son. Does he still work with you?”
    He shook his head. “He’s seventy-seven now. He takes care of his garden, spoils his grandkids.” He smiled. “Gives me lots of unsolicited advice about the business, but damn if he isn’t usually right.” He pushed open the door to the restaurant and put his hand on my shoulder. “It’s nothing fancy.”
    Piñiatas dangled from the ceiling over booths separated from one