Four Kinds of Rain by Robert Ward Read Free Book Online

her nightgown, felt her warm, soft breast and was swept away by tenderness. Oh God, she was so beautiful, lovely, and now she was falling down on her knees in front of him.
    And then he was holding her head in his hands as she unzipped his pants, and Bob felt as though he would never die. But even as he said her name again and again, he had a terrible foreboding. He had lied, and she had believed him, and even as he was swept away by the romance of it all, he knew that he had to make that lie come true. She was dead right. Nothing good could come for either of them if they were both poor.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    She loved him. It was amazing, as though it had been ordained, as though it were fate. He had almost lost himself in despair, ended up like so many other guys, hanging in the bars, talking about the lost days of youth, bitter and alone.
    But she loved him and that changed everything.
    Now, when he awoke in the morning, he looked out into his narrow, wire-fenced backyard and saw the first tendrils of spring blooming in the world. There was real greenery in his backyard. The idea made him laugh with joy. Hell, even the word “greenery” was fantastic. “Greenery,” what a marvelous word, so simple and yet so descriptive. What wonderful, inventive human being had first come up with the word “greenery”? People were inventive, endlessly so. They could invent language. Art, music. And best of all, they could reinvent themselves.
    On the suddenly Technicolor street, Bob noticed his neighbors. There was Maria Chacón, and her two beautiful babies. He found himself stopping and admiring the children. “Look at those two cool guys,” he said. Maria reminded him gently that the kids were
niñas,
and Bob found this fantastic, as well.
    All last year he’d assumed that Maria’s kids were boys. Why? Because he had never bothered to ask her. Because in his depression he had assumed that he hated them all. Damn foreign assholes moving into the neighborhood, probably into some kind of drug-running bullshit. He’d told himself this negative crap all last year, every single time he saw them.
    Or, to be more precise, every time he failed to see them. Because now it was obvious that he hadn’t really seen them at all. Never seen the kids, or Maria, or her handsome young husband, Javier, who worked down at Harborplace and was so obviously devoted to his family.
    Bob was stunned by his new vision, by how human, vulnerable, hopeful, and kind they were. Hey, he bet they’d like Jesse. Well, of course they’d like Jesse. Who wouldn’t? Hell, they’d
love
Jesse. He told them to make sure they came down to the Lodge to hear the Rockaholics. He told them that his girlfriend was the lead singer and Maria was so happy for him. She said to him, “You know what, Bob, you look like you had a miracle,” and Bob thought, Yeah, that’s right. It really is that, a real honest-to-God miracle.
    And when he dropped in down at Pop Ikehorn’s corner store, he was stunned that the old guy smiled at him. Granted, it was a toothless, yellow gum smile, and the guy still looked like a two-hundred-year-old corpse, but how many times had old Pop
ever
smiled at anyone over the years? Like none, zero. The old guy with the curling yellow fingernails and the hair sprouting out of his ears, the old guy who sat hunched behind his cash register with his spit-mottled cardigan with one shiny silver button from the Sample Store, left over from say 1958, and he half dared you to say hello to him but even grumpy old Ikehorn couldn’t hang in there with his loser’s attitude against the new-and-improved Bob. No way, Jose. Now he smiled at Bob and even asked him to …
gasp
… reach into a bag of ancient pork rinds, which he had been eating since maybe 1945, and Bob, happy, goofy, mood-enhanced, did just that. He reached into the horrific bag and he grabbed hold of one, half convinced that at any second maggots were going to squirm onto his fingers, and he picked