Read Online Rumors from the Lost World by Alan Davis - Free Book Online

fingers of whiskey. Outside he could hear bottle rockets whine, dogs yelp. Beyond the dim moon-glow of his gunmetal gray stoop were duplexes, small bungalows like his own, and apartment buildings decorated with wreaths and strings of colored lights. It looked pretty, the one time of year people pretended the place wasn’t a dump. A tricycle lay deserted on the lawn next door. Paul had been a young freckled child who liked to look too long at things, study the way a train moved or the queer arthritic walk of the priest. It’s the truth, Levoski thought. He joined the service for me. “All right, I’ve done it,” he said one evening, hair cut close. “It’s done.” A few mornings later, single bag packed, he left. “Over the ocean,” he said. “The other side of the world. See you.” Levoski, teeth grinding, put down his newspaper, stiffly walked to the door, stood on the stoop until his son drove away, then climbed a shaky wooden ladder to the roof and worked until his eyes stung.
    On New Year’s Eve, he fingered the pebbled texture of Raine’s business card and decided to continue the patchwork job he started the day Paul left. He gathered up his coat from the living room chair where he had tossed it the night before. Marge was in a trance, staring at her pictures, the soaps, talking back to the screen as though the men and women acting on it could hear her anxious shouts. On the roof, his scalp itchy with sweat, he fidgeted with each granulated shingle, trying to lose himself in the routine, and thought about his father. The old man lived and died with the unions. The union and the trumpet, that was his life. Even when he lost his wind, he kept the instrument shiny, endlessly told the same stories abut playing for Roosevelt once in the service band. He started Leon on lessons early. Too early. One day Levoski left the brass instrument in the practice room and went to play dirtball.
    He climbed down from the roof, leaving the job unfinished. In the kitchen, holding down his shirt so it wouldn’t ride his belly, breathing raggedly, he poured an orange juice over vodka for Marge. It’s time to tell her about Paul, he thought, but she was dozing on the couch, a bony elbow shielding her eyes. On the TV, hundreds of people sang in perfect harmony. Each one wanted to buy the world a Coke. He turned off the set and covered her with an old knitted shawl.
    That night, in Flossmoor, the tree-canopied streets were unlighted. Levoski, a little drunk, looked across wide lawns and finally parked near the curb behind a string of Cadillacs and Chryslers. At the lighted entrance, a stocky man with a glistening forehead waved them in. Marge, squinting in the kitchen’s bright art deco fluorescence, took a chair, and Levoski went looking for the bar.
    The feel of large spaces, of infinitely receding rooms, each a showplace, possessed him with an illusion of grandeur. Several couples were dancing deliriously around a huge fireplace to a frantic beat blasting from the entire wall. Above the fire, two lovers in an oil painting were having one another. In the dining room two men butted heads, the glass table shoved to one side. They snorted and pawed on white plush carpet. A stuffed elk above a tiled bar stared at a buffet loaded with hors d’oeuvres. Through a picture window Levoski could see a covered pool and a tennis court.
    The roofer had been in such places, but only to present a bill or accept a cup of coffee. Now he helped himself to whiskey and looked for something sweet. As he jiggled mixers, one of the head-butters stumbled into him, draped a perspiring arm around his shoulder, massaged his collarbone. “Why do I do it?” he asked, a smile plastered on his face.
    â€œGot me,” said Levoski.
    The head-butter stroked his carefully-trimmed moustache and studied Levoski’s two drinks. “You have a woman here? What’s she like, this woman? Where