32
“Too harsh a push, to do this stuff alone.”
K.B.
*
Sweeney’s was closed. No sign of any activity. A guy was passing, and I asked him what had happened. He said,
“Sold. Just like everything else in the town. They’ll have luxury apartments up in no time. That’s what we need, more frigging apartments.”
The books arrived from Charlie Byrne’s, an eclectic mix of poetry, crime, philosophy, biography. Vinny had managed to mostly obtain hardbacks. There’s a world of difference between them and paperbacks. The only merit I’ve ever found in the latter is the price. Among the poets were Rilke, Coleridge, Lowell, Yeats. The crime had the foundation of Thompson, Cain, Chandler, Derek Raymond. I didn’t pay much attention to the philosophers, simply stacked them against the wall. My frame of min
