Excerpt: Seven

I used to be this real lousy son of a bitch kind of guy.

I’m getting better, though.

There’s this place you’ve never heard of somewhere between Boystown and Lincoln Park, sometimes on Clark Street. They sell real shitty coffee but people come by anyway to chat up the owner with books and music and dead poets and all because they think (and he thinks) that he knows shit about shit. He used to be some hotshot playwright but he can’t write for fuck anymore. If you know him well enough (and no one does), he’ll tell you to call him Roland.

I work for him when I feel like it.

I just tell everyone to call me Jude.