The Art of Making Money by Jason Kersten Read Free Book Online Page B

opposites-attract thing. I was always the good girl, and he was the bad boy. I didn’t like the fact that he was in a gang, but in those projects boys basically had to join the gang. It was either that or get the shit beat out of you on your way to school.”
    When Art finally worked up the nerve to ask Karen out on a date, she accepted, and they quickly became a regular item. During the winter they’d go to movies, and in summer they’d laze around at a beach off Lakeshore Drive, then grab a meal at one of the tourist spots on Navy Pier. Parental loss was their unspoken bond, but like most teenagers, they rarely spoke about the past and even less so the future. On the occasions when they did talk about their dreams, Art would throw any number of pies into the sky; one day he’d want to be an inventor, the next a real estate developer. Karen, however, was magnificently consistent. She intended to follow a Bridgeport path almost as well-worn as the one that Art would take, and he was so smitten by her that he never considered that it made any future with her problematic at best. “I only ever had one dream. Maybe it’s because when my mom died, the man who broke the news and comforted me was a cop, but I knew since I was five that one day I would become a Chicago police officer.”
    Karen’s dream would have to wait. Six months after they began dating, she learned she was pregnant. At fourteen, she was about to become a teenage mother, while Art—with no high school diploma, no job, and few connections outside of the street—had at best dim prospects of supporting a child. “I didn’t know what I was gonna do,” he says. “I was a kid myself. I knew I didn’t want to be like my father and just avoid responsibility—that wasn’t going to be a possibility. Somehow I had to find a way to make it out of there.”

3
    THE APPRENTICE
    We are all bastards;
And that most venerable man which I
Did call my father, was I know not where
When I was stamp’d; some coiner with his tools
Made me a counterfeit. . . .
     
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Cymbeline , Act II, Scene V
     
     
     
     
    Ed’s Snack Shop had been around for twenty-one years when Malinda took a waitressing job to help prepare for the baby. Owned by a local named Ed Thompson, it was a Bridgeport fixture, an old twenties-style diner with a bar counter and a long line of windows overlooking Halsted Street. It was a familiar world to Malinda, easily navigable, and Ed was sympathetic to her condition. As long as she was on her meds, which was most of the time, he let her work the day shift. Since it was right across the street from the Bridgeport Homes, she was never far from her children. Art and Wendz dropped by on a daily basis, a ritual she always looked forward to. She’d sit them at the counter, feed them burgers and soda, and pry them for details about their lives while they pried her for tip money.
    Years later, Ed’s son, Gary, would find himself writing a small memoir about Ed’s, then posting it on an Internet blog devoted to Bridgeport memories:
    Ed’s was a hangout for greasers, dopers, city workers, teenie boppers, blue-haired bingo ladies, cops, winos, gangsters, gangbangers, lonely old men, horny young men, college students, ex-cons, and families. You never knew what kind of crowd you’d see in there. We knew them all. We didn’t even try to remember all their names, so we gave most of them nicknames. I’m guessing that a lot of the nicknames were given because some people would rather no one knew their name. I knew people with names like: “Bloomers,” “Fallin’ Eddie,” “Pennsylvania Eddie,” “Bridgeport Eddie,” “Pete the Cop,” “Blonde Headed Sharon,” “Fuck Chuck,” “Mugsy,” “Crazy Charlie,” “Puerto Rican Sammy,” “Sarge,” “Large Marge,” “Cavey,” “Stormy Weather,” “Little Joe,” “Indian Joe,” “Billy Moon,” “Size Ten Mary,” “Mother Mary,” “Pollack Paul,” “Mr. T,”