Matala by Craig Holden Read Free Book Online Page A

chest where the heart lived or as if she’d swallowed something and it had stuck there. She needed another smoke, but her pockets were empty. She had hidden the money she stole from Darcy and in her nervousness stupidly forgot to take some out this morning—and, besides, nothing seemed to be open yet. She watched the few passersby for a smoker she might bum one from, but saw none. The two dexies she’d swallowed dry from the baggie were kicking in already. The world flew and flashed, and she could hear the hum of the engines that turned it all down deep beneath the mantle. A gondola slipped past, and it was so perfectly gorgeous, so stupidly, postcardishly, touristically, romantically, sentimentally, momentarily beautiful that she nearly stopped and sat down at a table alongside a café just to watch it. But of course she didn’t. She couldn’t sit. She needed a cig so bad she thought she was going to retch.

    I N THE ROOM SHE FOUND them still in bed. She dug into her pack and slipped some bills from the roll she’d buried there. She was about to rush back out to find an open fag vendor when she saw with a start that the girl was watching her.
    â€œHey,” she said, all groggy-sounding, and then yawned.
    Justine sat in the chair by the window. The cross was not glowing anymore. Her knees bounced again. She needed to go, but she found sitting nice, too.
    Will sat up then and looked at her and said, “He gave you more?”
    Such an observant little boy.
    â€œWho?” said the Darcy girl. “What?”
    â€œRoad candy,” he told her.
    She didn’t get it or pretended not to, but she crawled across the bed, giving Justine a perfect shot of her tight little posterior clad only in white French-cut knickers, the sort that pulled themselves up and right in there so you had to go around discreetly fingering them out every so often, so that Justine could all but see right up that charming little cunny. The girl went into the loo.
    Little Bitch, Justine decided. That was her real name, or it would be if Justine had anything to say about it. Of course she didn’t, wouldn’t. But she found something about the girl appealing. Perhaps it was the skin of her face. How nice it would be to lick it. Or the slight fattiness of her bum. How Justine wanted to bite it. Or the shape of her breasts. What a thrill it was to think of binding them. But Justine thought that really it was the look she had sometimes. The look that something as shoddy and common as a pisshole hostel could be fascinating. It was as if the girl had stumbled into the Never-land or Alice’s rabbit hole. As if some new and wondrous world had opened to her. She had this look, a most unjaded expression for a person of her status who was clearly trained in the projection of a veneer of sophistication. This smile. This wonder.
    When Will had returned to the hostel after his little snit and Justine cooled down, they talked about what had happened that afternoon. He mentioned this about the girl: that when he got her to take him out to eat, it all seemed so fabulous to her. His word, delivered a bit dismissively, so world-wearily. What he didn’t seem to realize was that he had the same look, the same wonder. Justine saw that about him straight off when she’d found him again two years earlier. He acted as hard and as bored in his way as this girl did, but he couldn’t help the look that came over him sometimes, just as she could not. They were a pair in that regard.
    The two wonder kids: Lick-lick and Little Bitch.
    Anyway, it hardly bore thinking about.
    â€œWhat did he say?” said Will.
    Justine shrugged. “Might have a job.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œBe nice to make some cash, no?”
    â€œGod, yes,” he said. “Doing what?”
    She shook her head.
    When the girl came back out, she grabbed her purse, an enormous shoulder bag that looked as if it was made from an old