Slipping Into Darkness by Peter Blauner Read Free Book Online Page A

yet. What about that driving tour of Ireland he’d been promising to take Patti on? Giant’s Causeway. The castles in Dunluce and Carrickfergus. The so-called ancestral home in County Armagh his father was always whinging on about. Would he have to be in the passenger’s seat the whole time?
     
    Forget Ireland. What about just walking to the paint store on Court Street? He should go there right now and look at the color wheel, check out every single shade before his gray zone threshold got any lower. Or maybe he should just go out to Belmont, sit in the stands, and watch a horse run. Just to see how its muscles moved under its skin, to watch the rippling in its flanks and try to freeze-frame the half-second when all four hooves left the ground.
     
    He thought of his uncle listening to the results from Yonkers in the kitchen of the old apartment by the Cross Bronx. His cane against the wall, letting his guide dog eat the scraps that fell off his plate, always yelling for Francis or his sister to go look for his Winstons, when the pack was sitting less than six inches from his elbow.
     
    Not for me, thought Francis. I’ll eat my gun first. He’d tell no one, at least for now. Less than six months from finally getting the bump to First Grade and the extra five grand a year for the pension? Screw the Braille lessons and the audiobooks. Screw the guide dogs and metal canes. Screw asking strangers to help get you across the street. He was fine. Nothing wrong with his fixation yet.
     
    “I’m gonna be all right,” he said.
     
    “Are you?”
     
    “Sure. I’m used to dealing with bad news in my business.”
     
    “Really?” The doctor cocked an eyebrow. “Telemarketing must be tougher than I thought.”
     
     

    4
     
     
     
    L ONG AGO, IN a distant land . . .”
     
    Hoolian lay like a broken clock on his cousin Jessica’s ratty-ass brown sofa, twitching in and out of consciousness, while the TV blared and a roomful of little girls played dress-up around him.
     
    “I, Aku, the shape-shifting master of darkness, released an unspeakable evil. . . .”
     
    He opened one eye and saw a cartoon demon on the screen with a pitchfork head and green lips, then drowsed off again for a few seconds as the narrator talked about a brave young warrior who stepped forth with a magic sword to oppose him.
     
    In his half-awake state, he saw himself as the young samurai with his sword, on the steps of the courthouse in a long white robe, his hair knotted back with a chopstick, his blade curving and flashing as he laid into enemies on all sides.
     
    “Now the FOOL seeks to return to the past. . . .”
     
    He swung the sword again and the crowd gasped and parted, revealing a girl stretched out before him, gagging and pointing to a slash in her throat. His heart shrank as he saw his father behind her, cradling her head and whispering to her in Spanish, trying to keep her calm. Lo siento, muchacha. Lo siento.
     
    He sat up suddenly and found a little girl with a tarnished doll’s face and stringy black hair staring at him, waving a handle in his face.
     
    “Would you do this for me?”
     
    He rubbed his eyes, trying to get oriented, bits of sleep stinging like ground glass in the corners. It was close to four in the morning when he finally got Jessica on the phone, just coming home from a club, and walked over to her apartment from the boardwalk. Even at that late hour, he’d noticed that things seemed a little off. The heat was up too high and there was nothing in the refrigerator except for a carton of Tropicana orange juice, a few greasy containers of Chinese takeout, and a half gallon of milk three days past its expiration. Five of them were living there and sharing one cramped bathroom, with mold on the walls, a cracked mirror, and a chipped seat on the toilet. Before she showed Hoolian the sofa, Jessica mentioned he had to be quiet because she had three “babies,” who needed their sleep. But now that he looked around, he saw she also had the