Beautiful Kate Read Online Free Page B

against the wall. She recapped the bottle, put it back on the platform, and repeated the process with the second bottle. By then I knew what she was doing, but I didn’t say a word, possibly because it was so damned mesmerizing, standing there watching a girl , my twin sister, casually going about the business of doing what I would never have had the guts to do, not even if I’d had a hundred chicken houses to paint. Finishing with the turpentine, she pulled out a pack of Camels and lit one.
    “It’ll be my fault,” she said, dragging deeply. “I was taking an illegal smoke break, and—”
    Casually she flipped the cigarette onto the straw and a sheet of flame roared up the wall.
    “And poof!” she finished. “There went our theatuh in the round !”
    We were both running out of the building by then, breathless and excited and scared. At least I was scared. As we ran toward the house I glanced at Kate and saw that she was smiling, a wild joyous smile that struck in my heart the first fear I had ever felt for her. But it failed to last. Within minutes, as I stood with her and the rest of the family watching the chicken house disappear in a tower of flame, all I felt was an awed sense of pride. What other snotnose, I wondered, ever had such a sister as mine?

2
    The next morning, leaving Toni still asleep in bed, I went downstairs and found Sarah and Junior at the kitchen table reading the Sunday paper and looking for all the world like a typical married couple, silent and weary and bored. Sarah had her hair up in curlers again and was wearing her bulky chenille housecoat, a combination that would have made Cheryl Tiegs look dowdy. As I got a cup of coffee and sat down, she excused herself and hurried back upstairs, saying something about being late for church, which not unexpectedly drew a smirk from Junior.
    “Me, it’s okay to look like a bum in front of. But big brother—now, that’s a different story.”
    I reminded him that she had to get ready for church, which only made him laugh.
    “Listen, I know her better than she knows herself. And for some reason, she actually thinks you’re hot shit. Now, ain’t that a laugh?”
    I toasted him with my coffee. “You’re a sweet kid, Junior. You brighten your little corner.”
    “Amen, brother.”
    That bitchy exchange must have satisfied him, given the muscles of his animus sufficient workout for the time being, for he became almost pleasant from that point on. I scrambled some eggs and made toast and a glass of reconstituted orange juice. And, sitting down to eat, I scoured the Tribune as if I expected to find my story bannered in it: Unemployed Screenwriter Flees California under Suspicious Circumstances . But once again the world had failed to take note of my comings and goings, almost as if it had better things to do, such as chronicling the previous night’s inventory of mayhem, all the beatings and rapes and shootings and robberies that had occupied the citizenry since the last issue of the paper, twenty-four hours before.
    Putting the paper down, I took note of the beautiful day outside.
    “Think I’ll take a walk around the place,” I said. “See how it’s holding up.”
    Junior looked at the clock. “Yeah, you still got time. I’ll go with you.”
    “What do you mean, got time?”
    “Before the Lords show up. The barn, it’s their clubhouse.”
    “What Lords ?”
    “The Congo Lords. A gang of neighborhood black kids, teenagers mostly. The barn and the grounds too—it’s all pretty much theirs.”
    “What do you mean—they rent it?”
    “After a fashion, yeah. They agree not to burn us out and we agree to let ’em have the barn.”
    “Beautiful.”
    Junior shrugged. “Maybe not. But it is survival. And these days, that’s the name of the game.”
    I could not argue that point. And anyway, Toni had just come down the stairs, wearing her own robe for a change, a long green Dragon Lady affair with a split up the side, showing not only