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

flyest most up-to-date equipment money could buy: a wide-screen TV, a PlayStation 2, and one of those shiny high-tech stereo receivers with the little red lights that changed from a pyramid to a plateau in time with the beat.
     
    “I can’t reach the back.” The girl waved what he finally recognized as a brush in his face. “Do it for me, please.”
     
    He covered himself with a blanket and saw that the clock above the TV said it was almost eight o’clock. Why weren’t these girls getting ready for school?
     
    “Come on! ” She thrust the brush at him impatiently, six years old and used to demanding attention.
     
    He hesitated, not sure if he could trust himself.
     
    “Go already.”
     
    He took the brush and watched as she turned like a diva expecting her stylist to make her beautiful. A glistening black seaweed tangle confronted him. It seemed wrong to disturb it, to interfere with its wild natural splendor, to ensnare himself in any way.
     
    “What’s wrong with you?” She glanced over her shoulder. “You stoopid? ”
     
    Gently, he put the brush against the back of her head and slowly swept it down, realizing that he had never done this before.
     
    “Do it harder,” she insisted.
     
    He looked around, hoping Jessica or her current boyfriend, “Exclusive,” would come out and take over for him. But their bedroom door remained firmly shut and the two other little girls kept playing their dress-up game, ignoring them and shimmying like disco harlots.
     
    He pulled the bristles through her dark strands, noticing it had been a while since the girl washed her hair.
     
    “ Ow! That’s too hard!”
     
    He leaned forward, concentrating, steadying her with one hand on top of her fragile little scalp, gently guiding the brush with the other, the worst of the snags already taken care of.
     
    “Now you got it!”
     
    He was finding his rhythm, getting the glide in his fingers. Here I am, just brushing a little girl’s hair. Without a trace of self-consciousness, she sat down on his knee. He reached for the blanket to cover more of himself, afraid that the simple pressure of a warm body would give him an erection.
     
    Of course, then the bedroom door opened and Exclusive strolled out, a bony-ass dude with cornrows and a build like a dislocated middle finger, scratching his nuts in beige bikini-style Jockeys. Hoolian already half suspected the man was pitching crack at the projects, what with all the expensive gear lying around. He cast a long mulish look at Hoolian and the girl as he went into the kitchen, grabbed the orange juice out of the refrigerator, and drank straight from the carton. Definitely not someone Hoolian wanted to hang with. The dude left the quart on the counter and sauntered past the two of them, hand stuffed in the back of his briefs now, scratching his ass as he smacked his lips.
     
    “That your daddy?” Hoolian asked, nudging the girl off his lap.
     
    “Nah, he Exclusive to my baby sister. But he jealous.”
     
    A few minutes later Jessica emerged, droopy-eyed and pudgy-kneed in a “Tupac 4 Ever” T-shirt, pink panties, and brown toenail polish.
     
    She beckoned him into the kitchen and looked down at the floor. “There’s a problem with you staying here tonight.”
     
    “Why?” He saw the little girl whose hair he’d brushed peeking at him from around the refrigerator.
     
    “You know.” Jessica trapped the big toe of one foot between two toes of the other. “My man just don’t think it’s a good idea you being around the kids right now.”
     
    “You’re putting me on, right?”
     
    “He very protective.” She glanced toward the bedroom doorway, where Exclusive had reappeared. “He don’t like another man touching my girls.”
     
    Hoolian looked between the two of them, trying to figure out the balance of power here. “But your moms and mine were sisters. What about la familia? ”
     
    “I’m sorry.” Jessica looked up at him with cowlike eyes. “Please don’t hate me for this.”
     
    “ Don’t hate