House of the Rising Sun Read Online Free Page B

lot of use out of my apartment?” Ray had asked, his blue eyes so cold they made her shiver. “Was that where you and Tony shacked up? Or did you go to his place? Maybe slip into his bed while his wife was out shopping?”
    They had ended up screaming at each other. What the hell did he expect? she asked him. Instead of being there for her when she really needed him, he was serving five years in fucking prison. There had been no way to earn the kind of money her mother needed by serving drinks at a French Quarter tourist bar. So she quit and went to work at the House, knowing what that job meant, but also knowing it meant she could take care of her mother.
    â€œShe’s dead, so why are you still here?” he had asked.
    Looking in the mirror now, Jenny remembered that early morning argument so clearly, so vividly, like it had just happened yesterday instead of four months ago. She had tears in her eyes then, too. Debts, she had told him. Her mom died but her debts lived on. Jenny had made her mother as comfortable as possible, but she was still paying for that comfort.
    As they got louder, the parking lot attendant came over. Ray didn’t say anything, just glared at him. The little old man shuffled off.
    In the end, Ray had balled up his fist like he was going to hit her, but Ray had never hit her before, and he didn’t hit her that night. Instead he did something worse. “You’re a whore,” he said. Then he got in his car and drove away. They hadn’t spoken since, until tonight, and he had come close to saying the same thing.

    Ray stood at the edge of the roof, facing east. The first pink rays of the morning sun were visible coming up over the treetops on Esplanade Avenue. He liked it up here. It made him feel clean. He didn’t know why, didn’t know if it was the crisp morning air, the sunrise, or something else. Whatever it was, he liked it, and because he liked it, he climbed up here almost every morning.
    He tapped a Lucky Strike from his nearly empty pack and stuck it between his lips. Then he flicked his beat-up Zippo a couple of times. Damn thing wouldn’t work. He had to flick it half a dozen more times before finally getting a dribble of flame.
    The smoke he sucked into his lungs triggered a coughing fit that almost pitched him over the foot-high parapet at the edge of the roof. A lucky grab at one of the guy wires for the satellite dish was all that kept him from doing a four-story nosedive.
Fucking smoking. They say it’ll kill you
.
    Looking down to where he had almost fallen, Ray saw the filthy alley that ran between the House and the building next door. Two bums lay on cardboard pallets beside a Dumpster. He took a deep breath and smelled the stink rising from the alley. It reminded him that the brief feeling of cleanliness he had up here was nothing but an illusion, because even up here, he was still surrounded by shit.
    Illusion or not, this brief moment of solitude was something he looked forward to each morning, and in order to enjoy it on this really fucked-up morning, he pushed everything out of his mind—Pete Messina, Tony Zello, Carl Landry, Jenny Porter, the two bums lying on the ground four stories below—and let the crisp air wash over him as the sun peeked over the treetops and painted the clouds crimson. The scene before him brought back a childhood memory, back before his mother died, before his father sank into a bottle. It reminded him of something hisdad told him one morning. How did that go . . . mornings red sky . . . No, that wasn’t it. He thought hard for a minute.
Red sky at night, sailor’s delight
. Yeah, that was it.
Red sky at morning, sailor take warning
. With the sun halfway above the trees, the sky was bloodred. Rain was coming.
    That fucking Jenny. What nerve. Coming up, asking if he was all right. Acting like she was worried about a bump on his head and a black eye.
Why would she care about that after she