Right as Rain Read Online Free Page B

walked up Bonifant Street toward Georgia Avenue, turning up the collar of his black leather to shield his neck from the chill. He passed the gun shop, where black kids from over the District line and suburban white kids who wanted to be street hung out on Saturday afternoons, feeling the weight of the automatics in their hands and checking the action on guns they could buy on the black market later that night. Integras and Accords tricked out with aftermarket spoilers and alloy wheels parked outside the gun shop during the day, but it was night now and the street had quieted and there were few cars of any kind parked along its curb. He passed an African and a Thai restaurant, and Vinyl Ink, the music store that still sold records, and a jewelry and watch—repair shop that catered to Spanish, and one each of many braid—and—nail and dry—cleaning storefronts that low—rised the downtown business district of Silver Spring.
    He crossed the street before reaching the Quarry House, one of two or three neighborhood bars he frequented. About now he could taste his first beer, his mouth nearly salivating at the thought of it, and he wondered if this was what it felt like to have a problem with drink. He’d attended a seminar once when he had still worn the uniform, and there he’d learned that clock—watchers and drink counters were drunks or potential drunks, but he was comfortable with his own reasons for looking forward to that first one and he could not bring himself to become alarmed. He liked bars and the companionship to be found in them; it was no more complicated or sinister than that. And anyway, he’d never allow alcoholism to happen to him; he had far too many issues to contend with as it stood.
    He cut through the bank parking lot, passing the new Irish bar on the second floor of the corner building at Thayer and Georgia, and he did not slow his pace. He neared a black man coming in the opposite direction, and though either one of them could have stepped aside, neither of them did, and they bumped each other’s shoulder and kept walking without an apology or a threatening word.
    On the east side of Georgia he passed Rosita’s, where the young woman named Juana worked, and he was careful to hurry along and not look through the plate glass colored with Christmas lights and sexy neon signs advertising Tecate and other brands of beer, because he did not want to stop yet, he wanted to walk. Then he was passing a pawnshop and another Thai restaurant and
a pollo
house and the art supply store and the flower shop … then crossing Silver Spring Avenue, passing the firehouse and the World Building and the old Gifford’s ice—cream parlor, now a day—care center, and across Sligo Avenue up to Selim, where the car repair garages and aikido studios fronted the railroad tracks.
    He dropped thirty—five cents into the slot of a pay phone mounted between the Vietnamese
pho
house and the NAPA auto parts store. He dialed Rosita’s, and his friend Raphael, who owned the restaurant, answered.
    “Hey, amigo, it’s —”
    “I know who it is. Not too many gringos call this time of night, and you have that voice of yours that people recognize very easily. And I know who you want.”
    “Is she working?”
    “Yes.”
    “Is there a
c
next to her name on the schedule?”
    “Yes, she is closing tonight. So you have time. Are you outside? I can hear the cars.”
    “I am. I’m taking a walk.”
    “Go for your walk and I’ll put one on ice for you, my friend.”
    “I’ll see you in a little bit.”
    He hung the receiver in its cradle and crossed the street to the pedestrian bridge that spanned Georgia Avenue. He went to the middle of the bridge and looked down at the cars emerging northbound from the tunnel and the southbound cars disappearing into the same tunnel. He focused on the broken yellow lines painted on the street and the cars moving in rows between the lines. He looked north on Georgia at the street lamps