Ray of the Star by Laird Hunt Read Free Book Online Page A

either end of the mantel over the blocked-up fireplace in his modest studio, with their shoelaces intact but wildly akimbo, read to him as an extispicic instance whose meaning would only become clear after he had laced up the shoes and used them to put an end to his search, so after digging out a pair of cotton socks, he had pulled them on, taken a long pull on a bottle of sparkling water, and run out his front door, into the city, where although obviously he had done nothing in the way of training in years, he had found that, even in slacks and rather a tight linen shirt, he could run without pause for hour upon hour, as if his feet were enchanted, the thought of which prompted the slightest of smiles to infiltrate his otherwise impassive features, happy occurrence that lit his turquoise eyes and further lifted his cheekbones, so that it would have been hard to say whether all the men and women who looked at him as he ran past were doing so because he was loping along in his street clothes or because he was so striking, which of course is neither here nor there, except that eyes and faces flipped in his direction as if pulled sharply by a string and for a time Ireneo found this distracting and worried that all the attention he was receiving would negatively impact on his ability to search, but just as he was thinking this it seemed to him that his old shoes began whispering to him—
turn left at the next corner, run as close as you can to the beautiful display of antique toy cars in that shop window, nod at the construction worker who is having trouble negotiating that alley with his untrustworthy backhoe, sprint across the chalk-colored museum courtyard where the skateboarders hold sway, cut through the market but don’t run or barely run and make sure to lift and sniff a melon or a papaya as you go, hum a little, jog above the sea and take in deep gulps of the fresh air, take a turn down the boulevard—
and he liked the sound of this whispering, which kept him company even as, at stoplights, he was obliged to run in place, though he also found it moderately unsettling and decided to ask Doña Eulalia what she thought about it, when after he completed his search he saw her next, which, he had a feeling, now that he had rediscovered these marvelous shoes, wouldn’t—just as Doña Eulalia had predicted—be long.

T hat both Doña Eulalia and Ireneo proved to be wrong—in the short term because Ireneo’s old Asics, for reasons all their own, instructed him to keep his head pointed pavementward on the boulevard; in the slightly longer term because Ireneo’s mother, who now lived in elegant retirement up the coast, fell gravely ill and required his immediate attendance—was far from unfortunate in re the potential of an eventual dynamic unfolding between the silver angel and the Knight of the Woeful Countenance, not least because the information that Doña Eulalia was ever more eager to provide them most likely would have, had it been imparted too early, especially the portion concerning Harry and the candles, had a chilling effect, difficult to overcome, even on considerably more solid ground than that provided by a gold box moving (even only in potential—Harry didn’t yet think he was ready) toward a silver box (which had no idea said gold box was coming), on the crowded matrix of a pedestrian thoroughfare so bustling, so full, as they say, of life and its attendant distractions, and detractors/detractions, such as the three old men who, just as Harry, four days into his self-imposed calvary, was beginning, in great earnest, to consider packing it in for the afternoon, came and stood before him, folded their arms over their chests, and launched into a withering appraisal of Harry’s utter lack not just of artistry, but also of even the smallest degree of presence, to the point, as they put it, that he was almost invisible,
    “Yes practically invisible,” one of them said,
    “I can’t believe we noticed