Like it Matters by David Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page A

pull it together to get my name on the list.”
    “No, you could’ve,” I said. “You just didn’t. I think you wanted this part to feel like it happened all on its own.”
    “Ja, maybe it’s that. Maybe it’s also because he’s put a fucking PIN on the home phone.” She laughed. “So what do we do now?”
    Just kiss me
, I was thinking.
    Kiss me, then who fucking cares about the rest?
    “Ja, I was thinking about that. We could walk around and try talk to somebody, except I’m worried anything we find’ll be mostly bicarb and Rattex.”
    “Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “I quit buying drugs off the street long before I quit buying drugs. Also, I only have a couple of hours.”
    “Could probably get a bit drunk?”
    She shook her head again. “No, my face really wears it when I drink. And I’ll smell like a bar.”
    “Okay.”
    “So no more ideas?”
    I said, “I’m just trying to think of something you’d like.”
    “Well, don’t. Just think of something
you
like. And even if I hate it, I’ll fake-like it, I promise.”
    “I do a weird thing sometimes. When I can’t sleep at night.”
    “Ja?”
    “Ja, follow me,” I said.
    We went back up the road, past the Christian radio station with the sign in the window saying:
    LET GOD HAVE YOUR LIFE; HE CAN DO MORE WITH IT THAN YOU
    Past the youth church, past the park, down the road some more and then we took a left and headed up the hill. Ahead of us, all the house lights and the streetlights bled into the air, the mist so bright you couldn’t tell how deep it was. The road was slick and it had streaks of colour on it from the lights. We kept going up the hill, then I chose a street to turn down—Charlemagne, one of my favourites. I told her to close her eyes.
    She did, and that gave me an excuse to hold her hand. I led her down the road, looking at the houses—some of them looked like boats in the mist, some of them like castles. No one was home at the one I really wanted to show her so it didn’t look like anything. I chose one just a bit further down the road, one of the castles. “Okay,” I told her. “You can open your eyes.”
    The first thing she said was, “There’s no fucking ways you live up here.”
    I laughed. “No, my place is much further up the hill.”
    “No, I just mean, you know, what’s the point?”
    “Is this how you fake-like stuff, Charlotte?”
    She gave me a nice, long smile for that one. Then she said, “Seriously, I’m interested. Why’re we here?”
    “
Look
at the thing,” I said.
    “It’s a big house.”
    “No, it isn’t. It’s a huge house, it’s preposterously big. But really, just look at it.” I went and stood behind her, my one hand on her shoulder, the other one pointing out in front. “You see how it’s lit from the bottom like that? Those are footlights. And you see how they’ve cut the ivy, so you see those big shadows there from the leaves? It’s like they knew we were coming. And there, about halfway up the wall, those deep orange lights, don’t they just make you think of a castle? Burning torches or something. Rapunzel’s locked away somewhere up there, all night there’s a ghost up and down on the widow’s walk.”
    “Ja, it’s nice—” she said, but I didn’t let her finish. I turned her around, then moved behind her again and pointed across to the other side of the street.
    “Or else look at that one. It looks like a spaceship. And you see how it’s blue all along the bottom? That’s the pool, right? How fucking bright must that pool be?”
    She took her time to say anything. She was twisting a piece of her hair in both her hands, looking nowhere in particular—she was thinking. And she was so lovely I just watched.
    In the end, though, she said this thing that I didn’t get at all. Maybe it should’ve been a bit of a flare, I don’t know, but at the time it just added to my fascination with her. She said, “I guess I’m still hoping I’ll have all of this. You