The Pirate's Daughter Read Online Free Page B

the empty space on the horizon from which the future breaks like a thunderhead over the weary hearts of men and women
.

7
    Wilson got off the bus half dazed and stumbled down Overlook Avenue. The industrial streets of the Rubicon District were filled with a melancholy silence that was like the sound of water running over rocks in the wilderness. The dream had left his shirt stuck to his back with sweat; his head would not clear. He unlocked the street door to his apartment, went up the rutted stairs, and undid the double locks on the steel door. Just inside there was another door of leaded glass panes, enclosing a small foyer, barely large enough for an umbrella stand and a broken end table. The tarot cards lay on the end table with a set of spare keys and a half dozen pennies. Wilson stared down at the cards and once again felt the dread gnaw at his insides.
    The air in the living room was heavy and stale and smelled like dirty socks, even though the windows always stood open to the Harvey Channel below; only the bedroom was air-conditioned. A fine coating of dust covered Wilson’s life as it covered his books stacked to the ceiling against every wall and in the bricked-up fireplace. For the first time, he wished he had a cat to greet him whenhe came home, but he knew it would be cruel to leave a cat alone in the apartment all day. Suddenly, the next breath, the next second seemed unbearable. He picked up a book, Bernal Diaz’s
Conquest of New Spain
, wiped the dust off the cover with his finger, put it down again. The moment passed. He went into the bedroom and changed his clothes, got a beer from the refrigerator, and turned on the TV, as he did every evening during the week.
    Halfway through the news, just as Wilson began to doze off, the phone rang. He sat up straight, startled. Andrea was en route to Denver for a weekend management retreat—he couldn’t think who it might be; somehow, in the course of life’s ordinary disconnections, he had lost touch with all his friends. He waited till the fifth ring to pick up the receiver, his palms asweat with dread.
    â€œYes?”
    â€œWilson?” A woman’s voice. Silence.
    â€œIs this Wilson Lander?”
    â€œYes, who’s this?”
    â€œWilson, it’s Susan Page.”
    â€œPage?” Wilson said.
    â€œYou know, Cricket—don’t you remember me? You came into Nancy’s shop on Tuesday, and we went to lunch at L’Aille. I ordered all that expensive wine.”
    â€œYes, I remember,” Wilson said, and he tried to sound annoyed but found himself picturing her coppery hair in the sunlight.
    â€œLook, I’d like to return the favor.”
    Wilson hesitated. He felt the tug of his dread somewhere inside. And for a brief second he thought of Andrea on the flight west, spreadsheet across her lap, that business-worried expression on her face as she figured the numbers again on her calculator. Then he put the image completely out of his mind.

8
    The usual Saturday night spectacle in the Bend. Boom boxes boomed from the backs of tricked-out jeeps jammed to a standstill up Cooper Avenue. Along the dirty pavement, immigrants from parts of the world where men wear turbans and women go about with their faces veiled sold cheap sunglasses, bead jewelry, and T-shirts from plywood stalls. At the corner of Morton and Fifth, a man with one withered arm plucked a three-string guitar with his teeth; across the street a woman in a wheelchair sang songs from
Brigadoon
at the top of her lungs, accompanied by a midget on an ocarina carved from a potato. Gypsies told fortunes off fold-up card tables in tiny storefronts. The yellow tang of car exhaust hung in the air.
    Wilson pushed his way through this mess, through the crowds up McDermot to the Orion Hotel and went in the back way and found Cricket at the bar beneath the big neon clock.
    â€œHello,” he said. “Where’s my wine?”
    She turned around and smiled.