Luck in the Greater West by Damian McDonald Read Free Book Online Page B

doing here with her mother?
    â€”Sonja, what has happened? her mother asked, thankfully in English.
    â€”I think I was hit on the head.
    â€”We’ll take you to the hospital now.
    â€”Who’s we, mother?
    â€”Ah, this is, ah — the young man who lives in the next stairs over. I heard his car when the school called and asked him to drive me. He has taken me, bless him, and will to the hospital now.
    The young man looked at her and smiled. He looked tired and confused. It was how she felt too.

    In the casualty ward Whitey was tapping his foot with indecision. People would be knocking on his door, wanting to score, and then kicking it, and going around the back to look in — to wake him, or get in and turn the place over. Maybe. There were plenty of other dealers at Brunei. He didn’t want to leave, or to say he had to leave. So he stood. And shook his leg. And bit his cheek. Katerina Marmeladova thanked him and did something with her mouth, like she was about to talk, and then did it again. He liked this lady. The trip to the school had been a bit uncomfortable, but he liked the fact that she was a mother, living of all places at Brunei Court, and he was able to help. And her daughter, the reason he was here: he was fascinated. Both by her, and by his reaction to her. She was a school chick, and sick, but she was striking. When they had walked into the sickbay, he’d seen some boy on the bed, and that uncomfortable feeling from the ride over had escalated, but when the mother started talking to the girl sitting in the chair, the feeling swung. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was something he wanted more of.
    â€”Concussion, Dr Keshvardoust said. Don’t let her sleep this afternoon. Plenty of fluids. I’ve given her an injection for the vomiting.
    The doctor smiled evenly at Whitey, because who else could he be but a big brother? He smiled back. But his smile, unlike the one it mimicked, lacked medicine degrees, supportive parents, and proud aunties and uncles back in Syria. He wandered off, to let any further conversation carry on unhindered by his misplacement.

    â€”Thank you, Sonja said in the front seat of the Commodore, because neither of the back windows wound down. By the way, my name is Sonja.
    â€”I know, he said. Your mother told me.
    She was still pale, but a peachiness had returned to her cheeks, and Whitey found it hard to keep his eyes off her. She looked up at him, her head angled down slightly. Her eyes were too bright to look into and drive. The dull road was much less intrusive.
    At Brunei, he put his hand on her back to help her up the stairs, and left for his own flat to the sound of their gratitude, saying:
    â€”No worries, hope ya feel better.
    He was flushed with new feelings he liked — they gave him an energy — but that he wished to purge, because he couldn’t identify them.
    Â 
    The days of supposedly increased choices fell into one another. He did sit-ups and push-ups, for lack of the prison gym. He watched what was on the telly. People came over to score. Some sat, had a smoke, got paranoid, and left. Others left straightaway, and he could hear them talking to whomever had chucked in with them in the stairwell, examining and debating size and aroma. He only sold to those he knew well now, but he was also aware that customers inevitably made introductions. It was hard to tell with speed buyers. But, he reasoned, pot buyers could be trusted. And six months had taught him not to explore offers of purchases of ozs of goey — or H.
    Natalie came over. They fucked, rolling around on the foam between knocks at the door. And though he’d never had feelings for her before, now he started to dislike her. For her condescension. For her well-meaning — he supposed — instructions on how life is inthe post-jail age; how life should, could, be for him. And the way she began each sentence with So .
    â€”So, why did you start dealing