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

know? Someday. I don’t know how, like the details, but I can … I can see myself having it.”
    I didn’t know how to respond—how was I going to promise her a mansion?—but I thought for a while and then I said, “Ja, but here’s my point. Who’s enjoying these houses more right now, us or them?”
    She said, “No one’s enjoying them more than you.”
    I laughed, but I kept talking. “No, seriously though, think about it. Isn’t that the tragedy? No matter what’s going on inside those houses—family dinner in that one, coke party round that pool, maybe somewhere there’s a baby crying or a teenager getting his hand on some real skin for the first time, who knows—the point is, houses like this, they’re built to be looked at. And you can’t live in them and look at them at the same time.”
    “But all that stuff—the stuff that happens inside—that’s the important stuff, isn’t it?”
    “Ja,” I said, and I knew I’d talked myself into knots but I thought I had it finally. “Don’t you feel so close to it out here though, Charlotte? All of it, all those lives in there. Far away, sure, far away—but also close,
really
close?”
    She went quiet and it was like torture.
    “Am I scaring you?” I said.
    Her eyes were watching one of her feet trace a shape on the wet road. She said, “Listen, um …”
    “My name’s Ed. It’s okay that you don’t remember.”
    “Ed, this was nice. Not fake-liking anything, this was good,” she said.
    Then she smiled at me in a whole new way.
    All I could do was smile back, and for a long while, that’s all we did—we just stood there and smiled at each other.
    It was a woozy feeling and it got a bit too much for me and I broke off from looking at her and I tried to think of something good to say next. I couldn’t think of anything.
    I looked back at her, and thank god, she was the one who spoke first.
    All she said was, “Come here.”

    O N THE WAY BACK TO M AIN R OAD —
    We were going fast because she was worried we were going to be late—
    I held her hand and I told her the only reason I was looking for Bruno was because of my new job at Helluva Rides. Like celebrating. She said, “When you do the carousel, please make some of the horses scary. Red eyes. Fangs. Paint some snakes on there.”
    When we were a couple of blocks from the church she pulled me into a parking lot and we kissed some more. She kissed quite rough, but it suited her. My insides felt like coals in a furnace and I got the feeling that if you’d brought a match anywhere near my skin I’d have gone up in flames, and I couldn’t believe how long it’d been since I’d felt that, and it freaked me out to realise how much I’d been missing out.
    The kiss ended, and she put her hands on my face and looked at me straight on. She said, “Listen, Ed, you’re going to have to go ahead and check if he’s there already. And if he is, I’m sorry, but things might get a bit nuts. Just warning you.”
    “Like how nuts? Does he have a gun?”
    “No,” she said. She wasn’t smiling. “Just like shouting. And crying. From both sides.”
    I held her hands and I told her, “I’m not scared.”
    “No?”
    “No, I’m—”
    I didn’t finish because she kissed me again.
    I suppose I should’ve thought more about how to handle everything, but I didn’t think about anything on my way over there. I was just trying to catch up with myself. I had that old feeling of disconnection, of watching myself, except this time I was impressed—
    And even though she’d warned me, I guess I just didn’t believe in anything going wrong right then.
    I saw it from a far way down the road. Unmissably parked there with its headlights on, and just like in that dream I’d been having about it, there were some lights on the body of the thing. Not exactly like the dream though, because that truck was strung up like a Christmas tree—this was just a couple of guttering bulbs, barely shining at