Читать книгу Man Alive - Thomas Page McBee - Страница 17

9

Oakland

April 2010 ♦ 29 years old

Vader reappeared as soon as the car blew past me, and I felt the weather change: he was more spastic, desperate. He whispered to me, his eyes the color of the hardwood floors of our old Victorian on Broad Street, the bedroom of sneaked cigarettes and first kisses.

Something something give me, he mumbled. The gun held forth like the queen of the sky.

“Here,” Parker interrupted, waving her wallet. He ignored her, his eyes barely moving from mine.

“You can use my credit cards,” she went on in a measured tone I’d never heard before, soothing and forced. She’ll never be the same, I thought.

He took a step back and grabbed the wallet out of her hand.

“Okay?” she said, and then looked at me, like come on.

Wake up.

I have no cash—

I was mute. I hadn’t actually spoken, I realized. Not once. “You can take my credit cards,” I parroted Parker. My voice struck me, as it always did, as reedy: womanly.

Something passed over his face, his eyes focusing in on me. He shook his head like, Fuck. There was a wail of pain in my knees, an eruption of pins and needles in my hands and feet. He lowered the gun.

“Run,” he said, a mercy so abrupt, I barely heard it.

But my body knew exactly what to do. Shedding ghost hands, I came back to life and launched into the night like a rocketship, trailing a streaming cloud of my breath.