Excerpt

I sat next to Aunt Bridie and Uncle Tom. Nana was propped up by a hospital bed and piles of pillows, looking at all of us sitting in a row.
She had asked me what I was going to do for the summer, if I was still nannying or looking for work. I explained that I wanted to do a few different things but no job lined up. She nodded. She looked out the window and realized it was still raining, harder than yesterday she added on.
“You know, your Mom said you were working in the south loop, huh, Maureen?”
“Yeah, Nana. I still sit for them occasionally, just whenever the little guy gets sick or the dad is out of town on business.”
“That area used to be a whole lot different. That was one of the first jobs Mick and I ever did together. Most of the time I stayed in the office, yknow, doing what had to be done. But it was raining so he invited me out, said he only had to check one thing to make sure it wasn’t caving in from the downpour. We pulled up at about, oh, 12th and Halsted. It wasn’t coming down anymore but the sun wasn’t out, sorta dark but not night kind of dark, just an in-between state.
“Anyway, we were sitting in our little red truck when he asked me, ‘So you wanna go out?’ I looked at him until we heard a few rats underneath the truck, squeakin’ and splashin’. I told him no, let’s just stay here, we can have another cigarette. So that’s what we did for about an hour, just smoked cigarettes in our red truck while the rats ran around us.”