Read Online The Old Turk's Load by Gregory Gibson - Free Book Online
Authors: Gregory Gibson
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She was dark and beautiful and fearless from the first, and liked to play with the Mailman on the days he sat in the yard. She’d just started school when he got the operation, and she questioned him relentlessly, wanting to see the blowhole and the rest of the scar—the upper portion of it was quite visible, despite the Mailman’s post–post office beard—to know if it had hurt, and to get him to demonstrate for her, over and over, how he was learning to replicate speech by manipulating a prolonged burp. She taught him the Portuguese names for all the vegetables in his garden and made him repeat them in burp-talk, until even in the Mailman’s mind kale was no longer kale but coivsch .
Being the only fluent English speaker in her family, Ilda had some gaps. Once, after her mother had hung out the wash, and the three of them were in the backyard, she pointed to a bedsheet hanging on the line and asked, “What’s that?” The Mailman, disarmed by the question, made a confused face. Ilda went over and touched the sheet and said in perfectly unaccented American,“This. What’s its name? How do you call it in English?” And he realized it was a word she’d heard around the house in Portuguese but not in English in her first grade classroom. Burping “sheet,” however, was a chore. She knew it couldn’t be “shit” and was hung up on “cheat” for quite a while before she got it right.This was the occasion of considerable laughter; even Mrs. Menezes joined in.
The thought of Ilda and her laugh mixed with the steadying Demerol hit and bumped him off his suicidal groove. He drove from the pharmacy to work, completed his morning chores there, went up to the library, opened the scrapbook of newspaper clippings he’d been indexing, and just sat in front of it, feeling the pill bottle in his pants pocket, considering how close he’d come, how close he still was.
Then, even more unexpectedly—because this time there wasn’t anything as remotely plausible as Ilda to account for it—he broke out of the room he’d been trapped in since his operation, and out of the house that had confined him all his life. It was a giddy tumble and it landed him in the midst of a new world, a new grand scheme. Sitting there in the dusty old library, the light was suddenly different. He drew a deep breath and the air rasping in through his blowhole seemed fresher and cleaner than any air ever had.
The Sound of Money
K
elly returned to his office to find his secretary slouched in front of a typewriter.
“Cheer up, Gorgeous. We’ve got a job!”
“Fuck you, Kelly.”
Harry Jarkey was not gorgeous. He was a young, mule-faced
investigative journalist who’d lost what he thought was going to be his career, as well as his marriage, when the Herald Tribune went under. Now he freelanced wherever he could, and used Kelly’s office as his own. This was fine with Kelly, who felt he ought to have a secretary but never had enough cases for one. The tidy stacks of documents representing Jarkey’s writing projects looked like the sort of paperwork a busy detective agency ought to generate. And Jarkey was, after all, a highly trained snoop. He occasionally did work for Kelly. It paid better and was more interesting than writing articles on adulterated dairy products for Newsday .
In exchange for his use of the office, Jarkey was required to keep track of Kelly’s paperwork. That part was a snap. A brainless brunette with an hourglass figure could have done it. Nor did it bother him that, despite the fact he was not a brunette, Kelly insisted on calling him Gorgeous when he was in a good mood. Jarkey could tolerate the stale joke well enough. It was the glassy-eyed, post-hangover chipperness that drove him up a wall. The detective, perhaps a dozen years older than Jarkey, was something of a father figure. Jarkey couldn’t help but view him with both respect and disdain.
Kelly had come in whistling, still wearing his hat, stinking of
Being the only fluent English speaker in her family, Ilda had some gaps. Once, after her mother had hung out the wash, and the three of them were in the backyard, she pointed to a bedsheet hanging on the line and asked, “What’s that?” The Mailman, disarmed by the question, made a confused face. Ilda went over and touched the sheet and said in perfectly unaccented American,“This. What’s its name? How do you call it in English?” And he realized it was a word she’d heard around the house in Portuguese but not in English in her first grade classroom. Burping “sheet,” however, was a chore. She knew it couldn’t be “shit” and was hung up on “cheat” for quite a while before she got it right.This was the occasion of considerable laughter; even Mrs. Menezes joined in.
The thought of Ilda and her laugh mixed with the steadying Demerol hit and bumped him off his suicidal groove. He drove from the pharmacy to work, completed his morning chores there, went up to the library, opened the scrapbook of newspaper clippings he’d been indexing, and just sat in front of it, feeling the pill bottle in his pants pocket, considering how close he’d come, how close he still was.
Then, even more unexpectedly—because this time there wasn’t anything as remotely plausible as Ilda to account for it—he broke out of the room he’d been trapped in since his operation, and out of the house that had confined him all his life. It was a giddy tumble and it landed him in the midst of a new world, a new grand scheme. Sitting there in the dusty old library, the light was suddenly different. He drew a deep breath and the air rasping in through his blowhole seemed fresher and cleaner than any air ever had.
The Sound of Money
K
elly returned to his office to find his secretary slouched in front of a typewriter.
“Cheer up, Gorgeous. We’ve got a job!”
“Fuck you, Kelly.”
Harry Jarkey was not gorgeous. He was a young, mule-faced
investigative journalist who’d lost what he thought was going to be his career, as well as his marriage, when the Herald Tribune went under. Now he freelanced wherever he could, and used Kelly’s office as his own. This was fine with Kelly, who felt he ought to have a secretary but never had enough cases for one. The tidy stacks of documents representing Jarkey’s writing projects looked like the sort of paperwork a busy detective agency ought to generate. And Jarkey was, after all, a highly trained snoop. He occasionally did work for Kelly. It paid better and was more interesting than writing articles on adulterated dairy products for Newsday .
In exchange for his use of the office, Jarkey was required to keep track of Kelly’s paperwork. That part was a snap. A brainless brunette with an hourglass figure could have done it. Nor did it bother him that, despite the fact he was not a brunette, Kelly insisted on calling him Gorgeous when he was in a good mood. Jarkey could tolerate the stale joke well enough. It was the glassy-eyed, post-hangover chipperness that drove him up a wall. The detective, perhaps a dozen years older than Jarkey, was something of a father figure. Jarkey couldn’t help but view him with both respect and disdain.
Kelly had come in whistling, still wearing his hat, stinking of
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