Black Friday by David Goodis Read Free Book Online Page B

highbacked chair. The entire arrangement, lamp and pale blue light and figure in white and the brown top of the chair, topping the white, amounted to a face, and it was the face of his dead brother, Haskell.
Hart wondered if he would cut himself to ribbons if he went headfirst through one of the front windows.
From the chair a feminine voice said, "Who is that?"
Hart took in what felt like a quart of air and let it out with his mouth wide open. He said, "It's Al."
"This is Myrna."
Her voice wasn't a whisper. It was lower than a whisper.
Hart said, "What bothers you?"
She said, "Paul was my brother."
The space between them was a block of quiet freezing with immeasurable speed.
It was that way for more than a minute, then she said, "What brought you downstairs?"
"I don't know. I couldn't sleep."
She said, "Paul was twenty-eight. He had a lot of trouble with his insides. It was a bad condition and he had no business getting in fights. But he was always fighting. He never had any friends, because he was so hard to get along with. He was sick inside all the time, and he was always irritable and always as nasty as he could be. But I guess that isn't the point. The point is, he always took care of me."
Hart said, "How old are you, Myrna?"
"I'm twenty-six. Paul always treated me as if I was much younger and he was much older. I've been sitting here most of the night thinking of all the things he did for me. He did all those things without ever smiling. When he gave me things or when he did things for me he never smiled and he acted as if he didn't really want to do it. I never knew that was put on. My father used to drink anything he could get his hands on, hair tonic and furniture polish and all that. One night he doubled up and dropped dead. My mother packed up her things and walked out and left us there. Charley came and took care of us. Then Charley had to do a five-year stretch and me and Paul, we had to go to a home. Then Charley was out and one night he came to the home and gave somebody some cash and he took Paul and me away. To look at Charley you'd never think he was past fifty, except for the white hair. Did you ever get so you just wanted to sit alone all by yourself and try to think what's going to happen to you?"
"I get that way once in a while," Hart said. "Not often."
"I looked in the back room," Myrna said, "but Paul wasn't there. What did they do with Paul?"
"I don't know," Hart said.
"I'll find out in the morning," Myrna said. She came out of the chair, toward Hart. The pale blue light rolled over her head and showed her face. In a frail sort of way it was an out-of-the-ordinary face. The eyes were pearly violet. The eyes were ninety-nine percent of her.
She went past Hart and up the stairway. Hart turned off the lamp, groped his way to the stairway, groped his way up and down the hall and into the middle room. A few minutes after he hit the cot he was asleep.
Hart was awake at half past nine. He saw Rizzio moving around the room. He saw Charley still asleep in the wide bed. He turned over and went back to sleep, and at halfpast eleven Charley was talking to him, asking him if he wanted to get up. He got out of bed, sat on the edge of the cot until Charley came out of the bathroom. As Charley took off the bathrobe, Hart took a good look at him.
Charley was about five-nine and on the thin side. The silver hair was thick, coming up from a low, unworried forehead, parted in the middle, combed back obliquely, then brushed smooth without benefit of water or oil. The eyes were light blue, nicely spaced above a short, firm nose. The lips were a puzzle, firm and at the same time relaxed, and the skin of the face was beige remaining from a summer's deep tanning.
Charley said, "Why are you sizing me up?"
"I'm curious to see if I can wear your clothes," Hart said.
"What's wrong with your clothes?"
"The suit will do," Hart said, "but I like to wear fresh linen every day."
"Look in the bureau," Charley said. "The three top