Belly Read Free

wait till she was the right age.”
    “Oh.”
    “Yeah.”
    Four daughters and three grandchildren and their names circled above him like a fly he couldn’t catch. Their differences eluded
     him.
    “Well,” he said, turning back to the boys. “Which one is which now?”
    “See the one who’s not even a year old, Belly?”
    Why couldn’t she call him Daddy?
    “That’s King. You haven’t met him before.”
    “I’ve seen your picture, though,” he said to the baby, who drooled on a plastic bib around his neck. “Who’s this one named
     after?” he asked the oldest boy, the one who had turned into a teenager, pimples beginning to surface on his pale Irish skin.
    The oldest boy turned his attention out the window and the middle boy said, “B. B. King.” He looked down at his lap, then
     raised his eyes to his grandfather. “I’m Jimi,” he said. “That’s Stevie Ray.”
    “I know that,” said Belly. “Stevie Ray with the big birthmark on his knee.” He looked at the stretched-out teenage boy and
     could not believe he was the same little kid he said good-bye to four years ago. “How old are you now?”
    The boy said nothing. “Stevie, your grandfather is talking to you,” Nora said. “You know, when somebody talks to you, it’s
     polite to say something back.”
    The boy shrugged.
    “Don’t roll your eyes at me, young man.”
    “I didn’t,” Stevie Ray said in a small voice, a voice far too delicate for a boy with O’Leary blood.
    “It’s all right, Nora. Jesus, give the kid a break. Sometimes a man just feels like keeping quiet.” He nodded at the boy,
     but the boy’s face was stone. Belly cleared his throat.
    “So it’s dead guitarists for all three of you, then?” he asked.
    “B. B. King is alive and well,” Nora said. She put a hand on her round stomach. “And number four is on the way.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    “Don’t say anything, Belly.”
    “Am I saying anything?” He looked at his grandsons. “Did I say anything?” The oldest one still wouldn’t look at him. Nora
     took another cigarette from the pack on the dashboard and put it to her lips. “Aren’t you supposed to give that up?” he asked
     her, and she turned and glared at him, let the car move down the street without even watching where it rolled.
    “Do you see me smoking it?” she growled. “Dr. Pearson said this is the best way to quit.” She nodded toward the ashes leaping
     from the tip of his cigarette. “You’re the one infecting us with the secondhand smoke. I’m just holding the thing.”
    Belly cleared his throat. “Well, how’s it going, then? Getting a girl this time around?”
    Nora turned her eyes back to the road. “I don’t know yet.”
    “Well, you better hope it’s a girl. Girls are so much easier.” He turned and winked at the boys in the backseat, but they
     didn’t even blink.
    “How are you doing, Belly?” Nora asked him. “That’s the million-dollar question.”
    “Hot.”
    “Me, too, Mom,” Jimi called. “Can you turn up the air-conditioning?”
    “When Belly’s done smoking.” She turned to him. “There’s a heat wave on. Supposed to last all week.” They were still on Broadway,
     inching down with racetrack traffic, and he noticed now just where they were.
    “Don’t you want to turn down Spring Street?”
    “We may as well just go on by there now,” she said. “Get it over with.”
    He nodded, adjusted the seatbelt that hugged the hollow of his stomach. There it was, the corner of Washington and Broadway,
     the large glass doors on the street level, his old apartment teetering on top. It used to be his Man-o-War Bar, though everyone
     called it War Bar for short. He threw his cigarette butt on the sidewalk.
    “What is it?” he asked.
    “Café Newton,” she said. She pulled up alongside it, put the truck in park. “I’m running in. You want something? A cappuccino?”
    Belly shook his head.
    “Be right back.” Nora climbed out the door. He