The Orchid Eater Read Online Free

said.
    “Keep an eye
on him for me, would you, Scott? See he stays out of trouble?”
    A look
flickered between the boys. Scott’s smirk returned.
    “You ever
been to jail, Scott?” Hawk said.
    Slowly the
smirk vanished. Hawk spied an involuntary surge of surprise and fear, but it
was quickly shrugged off.
    “You think
that was all just poetry, what I said about posting bail, that one phone call?
I speak from experience, friend. I’ve been in jail more than once, and so has
Edgar here. Now, sometimes when your friends go places, it can be pretty hard
not to follow. You understand me?”
    Scott
nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing, no comeback at the ready. But he didn’t look
fearful anymore; he looked exquisitely bored.
    “And you,
Edgar. Keep your nose clean.”
    Edgar
sniffed and toed the dirt, fingering the flexible gold band of a wristwatch
Hawk had never seen him wear before. One that was several sizes too big .

3
     
    “Mike, where
are you?”
    The woman’s
voice startled him, coming from right outside the supply closet. Mike James
nearly dropped his clipboard. He’d been drawing a dragon with a dripping torso
hanging from its fangs. He made sure that the vacuum bag inventory list
completely covered his sketch, then he stuck his head out of the closet.
    “Right
here,” he said. She was standing several feet away, with her back to the
closet. When he spoke, she jumped visibly.
    “Goodness,”
she said, turning a startled face toward him.
    It was the
middle sister, plump, pale and sort of pretty. She looked around the store,
flustered and embarrassed, then moved closer.
    Is this it? he wondered. Finally? Is she going to push me back in the closet
and do it to me here and now, with her sisters and all the customers right
outside, and her father in the back room? I guess she’s okay looking enough—I
mean, she’s a woman!
    She came very
close and lowered her voice. It was sweet and almost husky:
    “Mike . . .
could you go count the floods in overstock and see if there’s anything we need
to put on order?”
    “Okay, Miss
Glantz.” He tried to keep his disappointment from showing as he saluted her
with his ballpoint pen and headed toward the back of Glantz Appliances, past
rows of blenders, clocks and toasters, under racks of swinging mock-Tiffany
lamps, past the counter where the other two Glantz sisters stood arguing over
the week’s receipts. They were all “Miss Glantz” to him; he knew their first
names but didn’t use them, couldn’t even keep them straight.
    The door at
the rear of the store opened into a dark region of handmade shelves crammed
with junction boxes, lead pipes, Bakelite sockets, spools of coaxial cable. Old
Mr. Glantz, father of the women out front, stood at his workbench in a pool of
light, dissecting a toaster, mumbling to himself, oblivious to Mike’s presence.
A wooden ramp led up between the shelves to the delivery entrance at the rear.
He paused at the door, looking out at the parking lot and alley behind the
building, where the asphalt seemed to seethe and simmer, soft as wax. He was
almost glad to be indoors on such a day. Almost.
    Mike went
into a storage area near the top of the ramp and started rummaging through
boxes so light they felt empty, counting indoor floods and outdoor floods in
various wattages, in shades of amber and green. He noted the totals on a
clipboard. Someday, if he worked here long enough, he could look forward to
keeping all the different kinds of lightbulb straight in his head, like Mr.
Glantz, who could instantly name the order number of any replacement part, like
some Houdini of household appliances.
    He
calculated he could spend a good ten minutes back here before anyone disturbed
him; so, resting his clipboard on a dusty wooden shelf, he peeled back the
inventory lists and returned to filling in bloodstains on the dragon’s teeth
with a red pen, drawing big splashing pools of it on the ground below the
victim. He used a little red to touch