Kansas City Noir by Steve Paul Read Free Book Online Page A

overtones managed to travel up and penetrate her deep, early-morning sleep. Allison stumbled downstairs, slippers in hand, following the sound to the kitchen. A young woman and two men were standing over Britt, who lay sprawled on the floor between the island and the double ovens. Allison reached him and he began a kind of convulsion.
    “Where’s the shower?” the short guy yelled. “We got to get him in the shower!” As though the problem was that Britt was terribly dirty.
    “Sit him up,” said the other guy. He had that shaved head thing that bald guys do, and looked very tall, doubling over to get a closer look at Britt. “He’s choking,” he reported, unnecessarily. Britt was coughing in a retching, erupting way. The tall guy yanked him up and as he did Britt’s eyes opened, the way a baby doll opens its eyes when tilted vertically. His eyeballs swung up and the lids closed again and then they opened and he looked stonily at his feet and said, “Unh uh uh.”
    Something about it struck Allison as comical. She almost laughed. Maybe she did. The girl had been kneeling on the floor next to Britt, her fat bare knees sprawled so that her short dress hiked up even shorter, her fat hands clutching her throat as she shrieked, “Do something! Do something!” But at the sight of Allison her face lit up. There was something avid about her, a squirrel’s bright but distracted gaze shifting from emergency to stranger. She scrambled to her feet and lumbered forward, hand thrust out. “I’m Brandi! With an i !”
    Britt mentioned these new friends sometimes, and weekend plans with them, with a child’s disingenuous glee, but Allison didn’t recall any mention of a girl. She’d figured the all-night techno and cocaine parties to be another of Britt’s misguided temporary enthusiasms, like the brief but equipment-intensive saltwater fish tank winter and the car racing lessons and the filmmaking group.
    Brandi was as chunky and plain as a Cabbage Patch Kid. She wore thick, emphatic makeup, massive high heels, and a dress so tight it bunched all around her. Her hips and thighs were enormous. She was young, maybe mid-twenties. What kind of people name a child after a liquor? “That’s Nick,” Brandi said, nodding at the tall man. “And Ilon.”
    Britt said, “Uh uh uh.”
    “Can you breathe?” Ilon asked.
    They never had people over, so it was a shock to see strangers standing around. They’d been there who knows how long. Half-empty drinks littered the counter. Nick reached over and finished one off. There was a little pocket mirror at the far end, by the beverage sink, with a rolled-up bill beside it. That struck her as funny too. Like an ‘80s movie prop.
    “That’s a lot of granite,” Brandi said, following Allison’s eyes.
    “Marble,” Allison said. “Calacatta Oro.”
    “No,” Britt gasped. “Can’t breathe.”
    “Isn’t granite better?” Brandi said. “Doesn’t stain and stuff?”
    Ilon pounded Britt on the back, like something had gone down the wrong way. “Britt!” he yelled, “Britt!” Or like Britt was suddenly deaf.
    Ilon and Nick dragged him two rooms over to the library, Britt’s bulk listing between the tall, bald man and the short, hairy man. They leaned him back on one of the red brocade sofas and everyone grouped around and watched him breathe. His skin looked white and damp as poached fish. He reached over with his right hand and walked his fingers over the dome of his torso to his heart. For a second it looked as though he was going to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. But instead he said, “My arm. Arm. Allison.”
    The three looked at her and Allison turned and ran upstairs. She put on clothes and running shoes and grabbed her purse and phone, and when she got back to the library Britt was staggering back and forth before the fireplace with his right hand still over his heart. “I’m dying,” he said. “My heart won’t stop.”
    “Okay,” Allison said. “You