Read Online You Were Wrong by Matthew Sharpe - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Matthew Sharpe
Tags: Humor, United States, Literary, Literature & Fiction, Contemporary, American, Contemporary Fiction, Literary Fiction
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deadpan but I mean it funny. Karl, buddy, hey.”
The doorbell rang. The rec room’s occupants looked at each other. Jones’s eyebrows went up, quoting eyebrow raises in cinematic history. Jones often seemed to be quoting someone else’s manner and phrases, Karl never knew whose.
Jones went for the door and Karl made use of the respite to lie down again on the pool table, all obstacles to comfort having been removed. There was a sweetness to Karl’s experience of this piece of furniture used in this way that was almost a corrective to the repeated mild suffering he’d endured via it across the vast desert of his short life. Indeed, most of Karl’s suffering was mild, but there was so much of it that his two hundred mild sufferings a day were the equivalent of another man’s one horrifying suffering a day.
Again he explored the table’s gentle felt surface with parts of his head and face. And now in his relaxed state the brave thought found its way to him through the thickets and brambles of his melancholy: Sylvia Vetch had come back to beg his forgiveness and renounce her friend Stony, and so the world beyond his house would welcome him again.
An accidental convergence of architecture and décor in the house Karl shared with his geographically knowledgeable stepfather let it be possible that a man lying on the pool table and rolling his head around its surface could at a certain stage in this free and easeful movement have an unimpeded view of the house’s front door and entrance hall, as Karl now did on that Saturday afternoon, and so he saw the older man place a small cluster of ten-dollar bills in the hand of each of the blond boys who’d punched Karl in the face the day before, grab their shoulders, pivot them toward the door, and send them on their way. Rat’s-eye Karl, on the floorboards by the black piano leg, saw this too, and took it far more philosophically than real Karl did. Rat’s-eye Karl liked it. Rat’s-eye Karl, because of his intimate connection with the sad man in whose stead he looked, sensed in the breast of that man a new feeling developing. This was not the new feeling the latter had been hoping for, the one born of his bond of love and trust with the woman he’d wanted to believe had come to rescue him from his life; that new good feeling was a stillbirth, which he now cremated in the smithy of his soul. This bad new feeling was much worse than the one it came in place of, but it would have to do.
Jones returned. Karl lay still. “It’s not the intended use of the table. Could you at least let your feet dangle over the edge instead of putting your shoes on the felt? No? I’m sorry, the business with Malaysia, you’re sore, but you’ll feel better once you know where it is. Ignorance is painful and knowledge is consoling.”
“Who was at the door?”
“Some young men I did some business with.”
“Which young men?”
“Fellows from the high school, you may know them, Brent and, I can’t remember the other’s name, Tony, perhaps.”
“I teach them trigonometry. What was your business with them?”
“Lawn mowing.”
“What happened to the usual kid who mows the lawn, Matt, the nearsighted one who does such a bad job?”
“I misspoke. Not lawn mowing, hedge trimming, yard work, sort of thing.”
“And for this you pay them each that much?”
“I pay them the going rate. Why the interrogation?”
Karl looked at Jones for signs of unease. There were some—his labored breath, blotchy red-gray skin, pearls of sweat beneath the hairline and nose—all present, however, before the transaction at the front door, and therefore not reliable indicators of whether Jones was a lying sack of shit.
“One more game of pool, and then we go our separate ways and each man confronts the challenges of his own life in solitude on this afternoon of our Lord.”
Karl felt voltaic activity on the surface of his skin. He would demolish the old man in pool now, he would have to, or
The doorbell rang. The rec room’s occupants looked at each other. Jones’s eyebrows went up, quoting eyebrow raises in cinematic history. Jones often seemed to be quoting someone else’s manner and phrases, Karl never knew whose.
Jones went for the door and Karl made use of the respite to lie down again on the pool table, all obstacles to comfort having been removed. There was a sweetness to Karl’s experience of this piece of furniture used in this way that was almost a corrective to the repeated mild suffering he’d endured via it across the vast desert of his short life. Indeed, most of Karl’s suffering was mild, but there was so much of it that his two hundred mild sufferings a day were the equivalent of another man’s one horrifying suffering a day.
Again he explored the table’s gentle felt surface with parts of his head and face. And now in his relaxed state the brave thought found its way to him through the thickets and brambles of his melancholy: Sylvia Vetch had come back to beg his forgiveness and renounce her friend Stony, and so the world beyond his house would welcome him again.
An accidental convergence of architecture and décor in the house Karl shared with his geographically knowledgeable stepfather let it be possible that a man lying on the pool table and rolling his head around its surface could at a certain stage in this free and easeful movement have an unimpeded view of the house’s front door and entrance hall, as Karl now did on that Saturday afternoon, and so he saw the older man place a small cluster of ten-dollar bills in the hand of each of the blond boys who’d punched Karl in the face the day before, grab their shoulders, pivot them toward the door, and send them on their way. Rat’s-eye Karl, on the floorboards by the black piano leg, saw this too, and took it far more philosophically than real Karl did. Rat’s-eye Karl liked it. Rat’s-eye Karl, because of his intimate connection with the sad man in whose stead he looked, sensed in the breast of that man a new feeling developing. This was not the new feeling the latter had been hoping for, the one born of his bond of love and trust with the woman he’d wanted to believe had come to rescue him from his life; that new good feeling was a stillbirth, which he now cremated in the smithy of his soul. This bad new feeling was much worse than the one it came in place of, but it would have to do.
Jones returned. Karl lay still. “It’s not the intended use of the table. Could you at least let your feet dangle over the edge instead of putting your shoes on the felt? No? I’m sorry, the business with Malaysia, you’re sore, but you’ll feel better once you know where it is. Ignorance is painful and knowledge is consoling.”
“Who was at the door?”
“Some young men I did some business with.”
“Which young men?”
“Fellows from the high school, you may know them, Brent and, I can’t remember the other’s name, Tony, perhaps.”
“I teach them trigonometry. What was your business with them?”
“Lawn mowing.”
“What happened to the usual kid who mows the lawn, Matt, the nearsighted one who does such a bad job?”
“I misspoke. Not lawn mowing, hedge trimming, yard work, sort of thing.”
“And for this you pay them each that much?”
“I pay them the going rate. Why the interrogation?”
Karl looked at Jones for signs of unease. There were some—his labored breath, blotchy red-gray skin, pearls of sweat beneath the hairline and nose—all present, however, before the transaction at the front door, and therefore not reliable indicators of whether Jones was a lying sack of shit.
“One more game of pool, and then we go our separate ways and each man confronts the challenges of his own life in solitude on this afternoon of our Lord.”
Karl felt voltaic activity on the surface of his skin. He would demolish the old man in pool now, he would have to, or
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