Читать книгу Miss Lamp - Christopher Ewart - Страница 10

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That’s What Friends Are For.

Young Miss Lamp sat drunk when her seventeen looked fourteen. Paper Boy, whose seventeen looked seventeen, passed out while she squinted. She watched him wedged in the wooden Peachland Hotel chair, in various states of undress, until the sun went down.

‘Can we borrow your lipstick?’ Serge smirked widely.

‘And do you have any rope, you know, to tie with?’ said Rick.

‘Rope?’ Young Miss Lamp searched through her purse, finding some Peach Pastel and a fresh box of minty Butler dental floss. ‘Will this do?’

‘Thanks,’ Serge said as she handed over the floss.

‘We put four Demerols in his drink,’ said Rick.

‘He’s out like a light,’ slurred Serge.

Blobs of pulp glued the lazy corners of Paper Boy’s mouth shut. Serge pulled yards and yards of minty fresh floss from the little white box. Rick snapped it taut on the rounded silver cutter.

Young Miss Lamp had never before seen Paper Boy in a pair of blue underwear, all tied up with dental floss.

Hands and feet.

He didn’t even wake up.

‘Poor fella,’ she whispered to herself.

When the two other boys required a dainty finger to secure the floss in a double knot, she said, ‘I’ll do it.’ With a bit of encouragement, she wrote LOSER across his forehead.

Then she handed over the lipstick.

Rick and Serge took liberty upon his fresh white skin. Young Miss Lamp saw the coarse, dark beginnings of belly hair. FOR A GOOD TIME, it said, ROLL ME OVER. A brittle chest and peach air freshener.

‘Poor fella,’ she whispered to herself again. ‘He doesn’t even know what’s happening, and only in underwear.’ Young Miss Lamp freshened her seventh Captain Morgan and Coke, rubbed her eyes and returned to the foot of the bed.