The Monument Read Online Free Page B

maybe,” I said to Python. “It’s a dead bottom.”
    Python rumbled again.
    I moved closer.
    I know how that sounds. Stupid. Everybody says if you see a pervert get away from him, and everybody is right. But I moved closer. Maybe it was because I was dumb or maybe because I half figured nobody in his right mind would bother me with Python standing next to me. Whatever the reason I moved closer.
    Two steps, then two more.
    Still the bottom didn’t move. Just stood therein the window. I thought maybe the joke was bad because somebody really
was
dead, the way it was so still.
    When I was ten feet away it moved. Just a bit to the side, a lean, and I heard a moan, so low there was almost a chop to it, kind of, “Oh-oh-oh …”
    Then there was a fumbling sound, a click as somehow he reached back through between his legs and operated the door handle. The door creaked open and I was looking at a man standing on his head in the front seat of the station wagon looking at me back between his knees.
    Only he didn’t see me. He saw Python.
    “Oh God, it’s death, death coming for me. I’ve gone too far this time. I’m gone. Gone.”
    Then he saw me, looking still up and back through his legs, and he smiled—that is his mouth seemed to smile, upside down—and he coughed. “Tell me—are you with death?”
    I didn’t say anything. It still was in my mind that he was a pervert, and I was ready to run or put Python on him, either one.
    “No,” he answered himself. “Death wouldn’tcome with a girl. Why, then, why are you with that … that thing?”
    “It’s not a thing. It’s a dog. His name is Python, and if you’re a pervert, he’s going to make lunch out of your rear end.”
    “Pervert?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, I’ve been called lots of things and will be called many more but pervert isn’t one of them.”
    “How is it, then, that you’re standing upside down in a car with your bottom sticking out the window if you’re not a pervert?”
    “It was the way I happened to be,” he said, “when I fell asleep.”
    Passed out, more likely, I thought but I didn’t say anything. Hell, I thought, any old pervert worth his salt wouldn’t tell you if he was a pervert anyway. He’d just wait and do his pervert things, and I thought for half a second about turning Python loose anyway, just on general principle, when the man suddenly moved. His feet had been propped somehow on the ledge next to the door, and with the door open therewasn’t anything to hold them on the ledge and they slipped off.
    Both feet—he was wearing tennis shoes that looked to be made of rags—dropped to the ground, the legs and bottom followed, and he bounced off the seat with his face, kicked sideways off the back of the car seat, rolled half over and was sitting on the ground by the car looking up at me right side up.
    “Hello.” He squinted. “My eyes are bleeding.”
    “No they’re not. You’re just drunk.”
    “Not true. I was drunk. Now I’m not. And my eyes are bleeding. You wouldn’t have a bottle somewhere, would you?”
    “No.” I thought of Fred’s bottle at the elevator but didn’t say anything about it. “You don’t need it anyway.”
    I think I was going to say more about how he drank too much but he wasn’t listening to me.
    “God, look at that. See the light?”
    “What light?”
    “There! The light coming by that old wall, see how it comes down gold and across your face? Oh, God, see it, see the light? It comes downacross you like a blessing, like a kiss from the gods. I’ve got to get it … get it. Stay there. Just there. Stay there. Don’t move.”
    And all the time he was talking he had moved around to the rear of the car and was rummaging in the back of the station wagon, pulling at what looked like a bunch of junk to me, folders and boxes and paper sacks. In a few seconds he found a tablet and a small box that he brought to the hood of the car.
    “Don’t move, don’t move.”
    I had no