Read Online The City Still Breathing by Matthew Heiti - Free Book Online Page B

propane, wipe the kettle and in with the wad of lard like a baby into a cradle. One, two, three. Hands into the sack. Quatre, cinq, six. Coming out with gold. Seven, eight, nine. He opens the mouth of the kettle and, dix , the kernels rattle in like broken teeth. He pours salt over it all.
    There’s the sizzle. This crowded moment in the morning, just before the sun clears the smudgy brick buildings, just before the first bargain hunters tramp down the cracked pavement to Woolworth’s or the bins at Liberty, before the men slouch around the barbershops. This instant before the damned day cracks wide open.
    Here it comes. Pop. The smell of summer. Even as the first snow falls around him. Carnivals. Pop. Midways. Pop. Baseball games in old weedy fields. Pop pop. Movie theatres with busted springs and sticky floors. Pop pop pop.
    The day spilling out from all sides. No stopping it now. No way to hold it to that moment. To pin it down like a butterfly in some damned display case, as close to perfect as a dead thing can get.
    He’s got his regulars, but he never sells that much. Just enough to get by on. It started as a weekend thing, while he was paying off the mortgage. Then when the mine was done with him and his bad knees, he started coming down on those same bad knees every day. Gets him away from the house and that gaggle of women Pat has in and out all damned day. Chattering about their damned kids. Chattering about the kids their damned kids've had. And on and on. The things people leave after them. Careless. Scattered like seed to be gobbled up.
    Thirty years he’s been popping now, he figures.
    Still, he hears the whispers. He sees the men laugh to each other, pretending to gag. He sees the mothers pull their children close or cross the street. They don’t like his smile. But he’s part of the day. And they count on him being there. Like they used to count on the old clock tower in the post office. Before they swung a wrecking ball and brought it all low. Just another hole down here now. Like pulling out your own guts and trying to live empty. They still need something to orbit around. Some cities got statues the birds shit on, and he’s the next best thing.
    He pours in the last batch at four, stretches it like taffy through the hour. The last few bags he gives out to some hungry characters on their way to or from the Sally Ann.
    He doesn’t touch the stuff himself. The years have told him it don’t fill you up, no matter how much you eat. So he lives off the smell. The ghost of something better.
    Squeaksqueak, squeaksqueak. Back down the street, in time to catch the businessman heading home and the hookers coming out of the alleys. The damned deep voice of church bells up and down the streets.
    The old dog settles down. Waits for his return. He brings the day with him when he goes.

7
    I t’s the too-familiar smell of rotten eggs that brings her back to where she is and what she’s doing. Here in the plastic bucket seat in Mario’s. Her hair’s all up in rods but in the mirror she can tell her face is falling down. Creases, wrinkles and lines, everything deeper today than yesterday than the day before. Forty-three next month and Martha Novak is looking at another hard winter.
    â€˜So who’s the lucky guy this time?’ Lucy back in the salon chair, Mario’s hairy knuckles working out the dye job in the sink. Martha butts out her second-last cigarette, thinking, Least I don’t have any grey yet.
    â€˜William something – no, Walter.’
    â€˜What’s he do?’
    â€˜I dunno. Velma’s brother knows him. Wife died.’
    â€˜A widower. I like sad men. They’re quiet.’
    Martha drops her magazine. She read it last time she was in and the time before that. ‘I don’t even know why I put myself through it.’
    Mario stops washing Lucy’s hair. He points his comb at Martha. ‘You need to find the nice