Mystic River by Dennis Lehane Read Free Book Online Page B

reminded him that it was Girls’ Night.
    “Again?” Dave opened the fridge.
    “It’s been four weeks,” Celeste said in that playful singsong of hers that gnawed at the ridges of Dave Boyle’s spine sometimes.
    “No kidding.” Dave leaned against the dishwasher and cracked his beer. “What’s tonight’s selection?”
    “ Stepmom ,” Celeste said, eyes bright, hands clasped together.
    Once a month, Celeste and three of her coworkers at Ozma’s Hair Design got together at Dave and Celeste Boyle’s apartment to read one another’s tarot cards, drink a lot of wine, and cook something they’d never tried before. They capped off the evening by watching some chick movie that was usually about some driven but lonely career woman who found true love and big dick with some baggy-balled old cowhand, or else it was about two chicks who discovered the meaning of womanhood and the true depths of their friendship just before one of them caught some long-ass illness in the third act, died all beautiful and perfectly coifed on a bed the size of Peru.
    Dave had three options on Girls’ Night: he could sit in Michael’s room and watch his son sleep, hide out in the back bedroom he shared with Celeste and thumb through the cable choices, or tip the hell on out the door and find someplace where he wouldn’t have to listen to four women getting all sniffly because Baggy Balls decided he couldn’t be tied down and rode back into the hills in pursuit of the simple life.
    Dave usually chose Door #3.
    And tonight was no different. He finished his beer and kissed Celeste, a small, milky curdle rippling through his stomach as she grabbed his ass and kissed him back hard, and then he walked out the door and down the stairs past Mr. McAllister’s apartment and out through the front door into Saturday night in the Flats. He thought about walking downto Bucky’s or over to the Tap, stood in front of the house for a few minutes debating, but then decided to drive instead. Maybe go up to the Point, take a gander at the college girls and yuppies who’d been flocking there in droves lately—so many elbowing into the Point, in fact, that a few had even begun to trickle down into the Flats.
    They snapped up the brick three-deckers that suddenly weren’t three-deckers anymore but Queen Annes. They encased them in scaffolding and gutted them, workers going in day and night until three months later, the L.L. Beans parked their Volvos out front, carried their Pottery Barn boxes inside. Jazz would creep out softly through their window screens, and they’d buy shit like port from Eagle Liquors, walk their little rat-dogs around the block, and have their tiny lawns sculpted. It was only those brick three-deckers so far, the ones up by Galvin and Twoomey Avenue, but if the Point was any kind of indicator, soon you’d see Saabs and gourmet grocery store bags by the dozen as far down as the Pen Channel at the base of the Flats.
    Just last week, Mr. McAllister, Dave’s landlord, had told Dave (idly, casually), “Housing values are going up. I mean, way, way up.”
    “So you sit on it,” Dave said, looking back at the house where he’d had his apartment going on ten years, “and somewhere down the road you—”
    “Somewhere down the road?” McAllister looked at him. “Dave, I could drown on the property taxes. I’m fixed income, for Christ’s sake. I don’t sell soon? Two, maybe three years, fucking IRS’ll take it from me.”
    “Where would you go?” Dave thinking, Where would I go?
    McAllister shrugged. “I dunno. Weymouth maybe. Got some friends in Leominster.”
    Saying it like he’d already made some calls, dropped in on a few open houses.
    As Dave’s Accord rolled into the Point, he tried to remember if he knew anyone his age or younger who lived up here anymore. He idled at a red light, saw two yups inmatching cranberry crewnecks and khaki cargo shorts sitting on the pavement outside what used to be Primo’s Pizza. It