Читать книгу Bieber's Finger - Craig Nybo - Страница 10

Chapter 2

Twana took the train home late that night. Cops and ambulances had come to the scene of the car bombing to see to the wounded and to take down reports. The cops had requested that witnesses stay close by. Twana knew that should they discover what she had found on the sidewalk they would probably arrest her. So she slipped away without a word. She was entitled to the finger. She didn’t plan to give it up.

The train glided along its lonely track, rattling through the city down to the south end where houses stood like collapsing remnants of their former selves. It trundled by the projects, a collection of buildings huddled against the rest of the world. Finally, it came to a stop at her station. The doors swooshed open. Twana exited the train and walked into the night. Someone had tagged the cinder-block walls again. It seemed the station administration had to bring in painters to whitewash over gang graffiti on almost a weekly basis these days.

As she walked the platform, a luxury space bus passed overhead, closing in on the nearby space port. Twana looked up at the craft. The transport undoubtedly carried hundreds of the most privileged, all spread out in their own private cabins, eating whatever they wanted whenever they wanted as they returned from off-Earth exotic vacation spots. Twana had never been near a space bus. The people who lived in her neighborhood would probably never venture beyond the borders of their own town, much less to the stars. The space bus slowed its approach and made its gradual descent toward the InterTran space port, less than five miles away from the train station.

Twana swallowed her envy and continued her walk along the platform. She yawned. She wanted to get to bed.

•

She got home late. Butch’s car, a slammed down Civic, sat at the curb in front of the house. She frowned. She’d forgotten that Butch had come home for a couple of days ostensibly to visit Ma, but truthfully, he was probably lying low after some job he had pulled.

She let herself in and went to her Bieber-poster-festooned bedroom. With the door shut behind her, she took the severed finger out of her pocket and held it up in the light where she could get a good look at it. Such a small thing, insignificant really, but so valuable. If she wanted, she could have Butch sell it for her on the black market and make a fortune. But she wouldn’t do that, not to her precious love, Bieber. She had plans for the finger. Why have just the finger when I can have the whole thing? She thought and smiled.

Twana went through a little makeup kit she kept on her dresser and found a nearly empty lipstick case. She wound out the rest of the red stick and used a tissue to pull it out of the case. She spent a few minutes cleaning out the tube with a paper towel. She hunted through a drawer full of junk in the top of her dresser until she found a gold heart pennant. She debated taking the little heart off the chain, then decided to leave it. She ran the gold chain through a loop in the lipstick case and hung it around her neck.

She picked up the finger from her dresser and put it into the lipstick case. She snapped it closed and looked at herself in the mirror. The lipstick case dangled over her chest. She smiled at her reflection and turned to the side to look at her prize from another angle. Not losing her smile, she changed into her pajamas and went to bed.