The Best American Mystery Stories 2002
- Автор: Грейди Джеймс, Камински Стюарт Мелвин
- Год: 2002
- Язык: английский
- Год: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- ISBN: 978-0-618-12494-7
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Mystery Stories 2002». Краткое содержание книги:
So now he watches Lila walk away from him, like he’s nothing, and he doesn’t know if she means it or not. He touches where her ring nicked him and it’s wet. He takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes.
“What the fuck you waitin’ for?” He hears her screaming from all the way down the street.
He puts on his glasses. He can barely see her in the light of the street lamp. People turn around and look at her. Like she’s a celebrity. She’s like no one he knows in his whole life. He catches up with her and waits while she buys two six-packs. She hands one to him and they head out to the park.
The sky is full of dark, rolling clouds, hiding the moon. The park has this wet feel though it hasn’t rained, and the air lies heavy over them. It’s very dark and after closing time, and the cops are making their rounds. Lila sees better than he does and she hisses when she spots them.
The real night people are settled on the steps leading to the bandstand, talking, drinking. He knows most of them by sight now. They’re all different ages. Mostly guys. Some have regular jobs, but like to hang out and drink and do drugs. Anthony’s seen some do hard drugs and pass out. The drunks always end up puking by the lake.
An old black man lies snoring on the steps blocking their way. He’s giving off a big stink. “Move it, nigger,” Lila yells. She kicks at him. He groans and clutches the air, but can’t keep himself from tumbling down the rest of the steps. He lies at the bottom of the stone steps, then picks himself up and stumbles away.
Anthony and Lila sit at the top of the stairs, and she begins passing out the cans of beer. His beeper goes off. He shuts it down.
“Get the weed,” she tells Anthony, who takes some joints from her backpack and gives them to her.
This big middle-aged guy stands up from a few stairs below. He lifts his beer can to Lila.
“Hey!” Lila looks at him like she knows him.
He gives her another look and comes up the stairs to them. He’s wearing this shirt with the sleeves rolled up, half in and half out of his pants. He’s carrying a jacket.
“Hey,” he says. He sits down on the other side of Lila.
“Remember me?” she says, “I’m Lila from rehab.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Lila from rehab.” He slurs his words and keeps nodding his head.
It’s like they’re in some kind of private club together that won’t let Anthony in. Anthony moves in closer to her. Lila gives him a mean look, like who the fuck does Anthony think he is, and Anthony inches away.
“Danny Boy,” she says.
“Yeah,” the drunk says, and like he passes out.
Not long afterward a three-wheel cop car comes along with a searchlight that swirls all over. A loudspeaker goes on and the cop tells them to disperse, get out of the park, the park is closed for the night.
Danny Boy twitches and gets up. He gives Lila a drooly smile and goes off on one of the bike trails.
Anthony doesn’t go right home. He circles around and follows Lila. If she knows, she doesn’t let on. She’s put the hood of her gray sweatshirt up over her head. He follows her right to her apartment building, to the side entrance, where the jerk with the mustache is standing at the door. They don’t see Anthony.
“Jeez,” the jerk says, “you got trouble again. He called nine-one-one and the cops just got here.”
“Fuck,” she says, and she goes inside and Anthony doesn’t see her anymore.
Late the next afternoon, after he does the grocery shopping for his grandmother and carries the bags up the stairs to the fourth floor for her, Anthony blades to Lila’s building. He waits for her, smoking a joint out of sight of the doorman.
A lot of people pass him, heading for the park across the street, loggers and hikers especially, and bladers. It’s spring and everyone’s out. Across the way the bushes all have yellow flowers.
A taxi stops and the doorman runs over to open the door. Lila jumps out and walks in Anthony’s direction. The doorman helps a tall, thin lady in a fitted suit and high heels get out. Lila’s mother, though Lila is small and wears baggy clothes so you can’t tell she’s not thin.
“Lila,” the tall lady says, “where are you going?”
“None of your business.” Under her breath Lila adds, “Bitch.”
“What do you want for dinner?” the tall lady asks, like Lila hasn’t talked back fresh to her.
“Leave me alone,” Lila shouts. “Don’t you see I’m talking to my friend?”
“Ask your friend if he wants to stay for dinner,” her mother says.
“He says he would rather die,” Lila says real loud. “Don’t you, Anthony?”
Her mother ducks her head like she’s embarrassed and goes into the building.
Anthony can’t imagine talking like that to his mother.
Lila makes him excited, like he’s on the edge, going to jump. He touches his cock, feels the swell. It feels good. He’s stopped taking his pills. He heard at the clinic they keep you from getting hard. He wants to be with her all the time.
Apricot tits. Little knobs of nipple that connect his tongue to his cock.
“Come on,” Lila says, grabbing his arm. “I gotta get my blades.”
She takes him into her building past the doorman and another man in a uniform.
“No Rollerblades,” the doorman calls to Anthony.
Anthony stops moving.
“Forget it,” Lila says. She shoves Anthony forward and he takes off on the smooth marble floor, barely able to stop himself from crashing into her mother and another woman in a hat waiting for the elevator. He bumps into a bench.
The woman in the hat makes a little noise. She stares at Lila.
“See something you like?” Lila says.
“You kids are out of control,” the woman says.
Lila comes up and barks like a dog right in the woman’s face. The woman backs off and doesn’t get on the elevator when the doors open.
“What is your friend’s name, Lila?”
“Puff Daddy,” Lila says.
“I thought you said Anthony,” her mother says.
“Anthony Puff Daddy.” Lila laughs, pokes Anthony so he laughs, too.
In daylight, the apartment looks like a museum.
“Would you like a Coke?” her mother asks.
“Puff Daddy and I are goin’ bladin’,” Lila says. She takes her blades from her backpack and puts them on.
“Lila, please don’t upset everyone in the building.”
“Why would I do that?” Lila says.
“Come home early,” her mother says. And while her mother continues with, “You know your father doesn’t like you to stay out late,” Lila mouths the same words, making monkey faces.
Anthony can’t get over it. She’s so free. If he could only be like her.
When they get to her bedroom, she pulls off her sweatshirt and grabs a fresh one just like it from a drawer. Her apricots are stiff. She stops. “You lookin’ at me?”
He cringes. “No.”
“What’s the matter? Aren’t they worth lookin’ at?”
He’s sweating. “Sure.”
She pulls the sweatshirt over her head. “Come here.”
He crosses to her, trying to conceal the lump in his pants.
“Closer.” He’s standing right up against her. His cock shivers. She lifts her baggy sweatshirt and pulls it over his head, her tits in his face. He grabs her ass. He’s in a dark place, her sweat salty on his tongue. Her knee nuzzles his cock. “Suck them,” she says.
He comes, goes limp.
“Schmuck!” She pushes him away.
They blade through the park, drinking beer, and Lila says, “They’re always on my case, come home early, don’t do this, don’t do that.” She stops and yells at no one in particular, “We’re big trouble!” A middle-aged black woman pushing a white child in a stroller gives her a look, and Lila screams, “What you lookin’ at, nigger?”