Dancing Towards the Blade and Other Stories by Mark Billingham Read Free Book Online Page B

that I do, because I’m naked too by then. She finishes the beer she’s drinking and puts the empty bottle down. I say something that makes her laugh and she reaches out for me, pulls me down on to the bed then moans as she rolls on top.
    I had the two older women at the table marked down as the mother and maybe an aunt and I figured that the young guy with the shaved head was her brother. He had the same eyes and the features were pretty similar. He was probably a couple years younger than me, while she was around the same age I was. I couldn’t be sure, because I hadn’t got a good look at her close up.
    The bedroom-furniture couple had squeezed out from behind their table and gone, which made hanging around easier.
    I ordered pecan pie with whipped cream.
    I watched the cars pulling in and out of the lot outside.
    I spent a few minutes looking at the crossword, then gave up.
    I wasn’t drinking, myself. It’s been a good few years since I did any of that, so I sat there with coffee once I’d done eating, trying to make the newspaper last. There was plenty of news about what would be going down at The Walls the following day, but I skipped all that and lingered instead over the local stories and the crazy classifieds. I’ve always loved that stuff.
    The shit that people try to sell, the lonely hearts, the adult services.
    For a small town with only one major industry and a good percentage of its population behind bars, there were plenty massage parlours and the like. Escort agencies and strip joints and saunas. I knew the women in the pictures were not the ones anyone was likely to get if they showed up, but I’m not a monk or anything and they were nice enough to look at for awhile. I turned the paper over when the waitress came to the table with a refill, then sat and drank sweet black coffee for another ten minutes, while the day dimmed outside and the restaurant started to empty.
    Just sipping coffee and watching the girl across the top of the mug. Staring through the steam at the chain around her ankle and the hand she laid on one of the old women’s arms. At the back of her neck, where the fine blonde hairs ran down beneath the collar of her blouse.
    I’d been thinking about trying to catch a movie or something, but in the end I just drove around for a while, trying to find a station that wasn’t playing cowboy music. I took the car onto I-45, south-west into Walker County, and after a while I picked up signs to Huntsville State Park. I parked in the picnic area next to a gathering of RVs and campervans and got talking to a guy who was cooking sausages and pork chops on one of those cheap barbecue sets you can pick up at gas stations. He seemed decent and we chatted about nothing in particular for ten minutes or so, then I walked down to the lake. The moon was like a dinner plate. You could see clear across the water to where the pines were thick and black on the other side, but after a while it started to get cold and I only had a thin jacket on, so I walked back through the trees to the car and drove back to the hotel.
    I swear I was thinking about nothing but television, but when I walked toward the stairs, I caught sight of her sitting at the small bar in a room just off the reception area. She had her back to me, but I knew it was her. She was on her own, dipping nachos into a bowl of salsa and talking to the woman who ran the place, and I decided there probably wouldn’t be anything much worth watching on TV anyway.
    I sat two seats away and ordered a Coke and when I’d got it, I asked if she wouldn’t mind sliding the nachos along. I know it sounds like a line, but the truth was, those chops and sausages had made me hungry again. She passed the bowl and moved into the chair next to mine, said she was glad someone was taking the damn nachos away, because otherwise she might have eaten every single one.
    ‘I love these things,’ I said, grabbing a handful and thinking that she hadn’t got any