Out There in the Darkness by Ed Gorman Read Free Book Online Page A

that would be the end of it.
    The stucco veranda was filled with discarded toys—a tricycle, innumerable games, a space helmet, a Wiffle bat and ball.   The floor was crunchy with dried animal feces.   At least I hoped the feces belonged to animals and not human children.
    The door between veranda and apartment was open.   Fingers of moonlight revealed an overstuffed couch and chair and a floor covered with the debris of fast food.   McDonald’s sacks.   Pizza Hut wrappers and cardboards.   Arby’s wrappers, and what seemed to be five or six dozen empty beer cans.   Far toward the hall that led to the front door I saw four red eyes watching me; a pair of curious rats.
    I stood still and listened.   Nothing.   No sign of life.   I went inside.   Tiptoeing.
    I went to the front door and let Neil in.   There in the murky light of the hallway, he made a face.   The smell was pretty bad.
    Over the next ten minutes, we searched the apartment.   And found nobody.
    â€œWe could wait here for him,” I said.
    â€œNo way.”
    â€œThe smell?”
    â€œThe smell, the rats, God; don’t you just feel unclean?”
    â€œYeah, guess I do.”
    â€œThere’s an empty garage about halfway down the alley.   We’d have a good view of the back of this building.”
    â€œSounds pretty good.”
    â€œSounds better than this place, anyway.”
    This time, we both went out the front door and down the stairway.   Now the smells were getting to me as they’d earlier gotten to Neil.   Unclean.   He was right.
    We got in Neil’s Buick, drove down the alley that ran along the west side of the apartment house, backed up to the dark garage, and whipped inside.
    â€œThere’s a sack in back,” Neil said.   “It’s on your side.”
    â€œA sack?”
    â€œBrewskis.   Quart for you, quart for me.”
    â€œThat’s how my old man used to drink them,” I said.   I was the only blue-collar member of the poker game club.   “Get off work at the plant and stop by and pick up two quart bottles of Hamms.   Never missed.”
    â€œSometimes I wish I would’ve been born into the working class,” Neil said.
    I was the blue-collar guy and Neil was the dreamer, always inventing alternate realities for himself.
    â€œNo, you don’t,” I said, leaning over the seat and picking up the sack damp from the quart bottles.   “You had a damned nice life in Boston.”
    â€œYeah, but I didn’t learn anything.   You know I was eighteen before I learned about cunnilingus?”
    â€œTalk about cultural deprivation,” I said.
    â€œWell, every girl I went out with probably looks back on me as a pretty lame lover.   They went down on me but I never went down on them.   How old were you when you learned about cunnilingus?”
    â€œMaybe thirteen.”
    â€œSee?”
    â€œI learned about it but I didn’t do anything about it.”
    â€œI was twenty years old before I lost my cherry,” Neil said.
    â€œI was seventeen.”
    â€œBullshit.”
    â€œBullshit what?   I was seventeen.”
    â€œIn sociology, they always taught us that blue-collar kids always lost their virginity a lot earlier than white-collar kids.”
    â€œThat’s the trouble with sociology.   It tries to particularize from generalities.”
    â€œHuh?”   He grinned.   “Yeah, I always thought sociology was full of shit, too, actually.   But you were really seventeen?”
    â€œI was really seventeen.”
    I wish I could tell you that I knew what it was right away, the missile that hit the windshield and shattered and starred it, and then kept right on tearing through the car until the back window was also shattered and starred.
    But all I knew was that Neil was screaming and I was screaming and my quart bottle of Miller’s was