Blue World by Robert R. McCammon Read Free Book Online Page B

shrugged. “How long have you known Deenie, Cal? A few weeks? Girls like her come and go, man. Here one day, gone the next. Sure she’s good-looking; they all are, and they trade on their looks like their bodies are Malibu beachfront properties. You get my drift?”
    “No.”
    “Okay. This is man-to-man. Friend-to-friend, right? Deenie’s a taker, Cal. She’ll bleed you dry, and then she’ll kick you out with the garbage. She’s got about five or six guys on the string.”
    Calvin blinked, his stomach roiling again. “You’re… you’re lying!”
    “God’s truth. Deenie’s playing you, Cal; reeling you in and out like a fish with a hooked gut--”
    “You’re lying!” Calvin’s face flushed; he rose from his seat and leaned over toward the bartender. “You’ve got no right saying those things! They’re lies! You probably want me to give her up so you can have her! Fat chance! I’m going back to see her right now, and you’d better not try to stop me!” He started to move away from the bar, his brain spinning like a top.
    “Cal,” Mike said softly, his voice tinged with pity, “Deenie’s not alone.”
    But Calvin was already going back behind the stage, through a black curtain to the dressing rooms. Deenie’s room was the third door, and as Calvin was about to knock, he heard the deep roll of a man’s laughter. He froze, his hand balled into a fist.
    “A diamond ring?” the man said. “You’re kidding!”
    “Honest to God, Max!” Deenie’s voice, warmer than Calvin had ever heard it. “This old guy gave me a diamond ring last week! I think he used to work for NBC or ABC or one of those C’s. Anyway, he’s all washed-up now. Do you know what he wears in bed? Socks with garters! Ha! He said he wanted me to marry him. He must’ve been serious because that ring brought six hundred bucks at the pawnshop!”
    “Oh, yeah? Then where’s my share?”
    “Later, baby, later. I’ll meet you at your place after work, okay? We can do the shower thing and rub each other’s backs, huh… ?”
    There was a long silence in which Calvin could hear his teeth grinding together.
    “Sure, babe,” Max said finally. “You want to use the black one or the red one tonight?”
    Calvin almost slammed his fist through the door. But instead he turned and ran, a volcano about to erupt in his brain; he ran past the bar, past Mike, out the door to his car. I thought she loved me! he raged as he screeched out of the parking lot. She lied!
    She played me for a sucker all the way! He floored the accelerator, gripping the wheel with white knuckled hands.
    By the time he locked himself in his apartment, turned his transistor radio up loud, and flopped down on his sofa bed, the volcano had exploded, filling his veins with the seething magma of revenge.
    Revenge: now, there’s a sweet word, he thought. It was Satan’s battle cry, and now seemed branded into Calvin’s heart. How to do it? he wondered. How? How?
    Why am I always the little punk?
    He turned his head slightly and gazed at the black makeup case.
    It was open again, the silver claw beckoning him.
    “You’re a jinx!” he screamed at it. But he knew now that it was more. Much, much more. It was weird, evil maybe, but there was power in those little jars: power and perhaps also revenge.
    No!
    he told himself. No, I won’t use it! What kind of nutcake am I turning into, to think that makeup could bring me what I want? He stared at the case, his eyes widening. It was unholy, terrible, something from Lucifer’s magic shop. He was aware of the roll of money in his back pocket, and aware also of the bullet holes in his shirt. Unholy or not, he thought, it can give me what I want.
    Calvin reached into the makeup case and chose a jar at random. It was numbered 13, and when he sniffed at the cream he found it smelled of dirty brick, rain-slick streets, whale-oil lamps. He dabbed his finger into the reddish-brown goop and stared at it for a moment, the odors