The 25th Hour by David Benioff Read Free Book Online Page B

to—;’
    ‘I know,’ he says. ‘I know.’ He pulls his head away from her, sits up on the side of the bed, looks out the window.
    ‘Talk to me, okay? Talk to me. Monty? Don’t do this. It’s our last night for—;’
    ‘It’s not our last night. It’s my last night. You’ve got tomorrow night and every other fucking night, you can go out and let some lawyer buy you drinks, you can go skinny-dipping in the Hudson, you’ve got all sorts of nights.’
    ‘It’s still our last night,’ she says angrily, speaking to his pale, naked back. ‘Me and you is our , can’t you understand that?’
    ‘No,’ he says, shaking his head slowly. ‘Baby, do me a favor; please just be quiet. Okay?’ He reaches for a pack of cigarettes and tamps it against the nightstand.
    Thinking about her tomorrows makes him lonely – the idea of her laughing and talking with friends, walking down the sidewalks and glancing into shop windows, eating dinner at a restaurant. He draws a cigarette from the pack but does not light it.
    Wasn’t there a moment when he suspected Naturelle, a single lunatic moment when he thought she might have made the phone call, told them where the drugs were hidden? He had quickly slammed the door on that thought – why would she? what did she have to gain? – but once the thought is there, can you ever forget it? As soon as doubt begins to nibble at your faith, can you ever trust her again? And if you can’t trust the woman who sleeps with you, the woman who lies beside you in your most unprotected hours, who can you trust?
    In the distance sirens keen, and Montgomery longs to run, to bolt from the apartment, down the stairs, into the street, to catch the red truck and leap aboard with a wink for his brave comrades. He knows he could be a wonderful fireman. He wishes he were speeding toward the fire.

Five
    The whores in the parlor love to tell stories about Uncle Blue; rolling cigarettes and sipping tea from chipped teacups, they gather in front of the fireplace and trade rumors. Every Thursday at dusk he comes to them, hangs his black coat on a hook by the door, nods to Natasha, and follows her upstairs. After the couple have cloistered themselves in the grandest room of the brownstone, proceeding in complete silence, the other women begin with the guessing, trumping each other with wilder tales. Not one of them knows his true name, though they do know that ‘Uncle Blue’ is a corruption of his family name, a name apparently unpronounceable for Western tongues. Not one of them knows where the man comes from, though several possibilities are ventured. Perhaps he was born in a small city in Armenia, or else a village in northern Iran. Helena, a Muscovite, believes his accent is Afghani.
    All of the women are émigreés from Eastern Europe, as are nearly all of their clients. The women’s passage to America was facilitated by Mrs Dimitriev, who owns the brownstone and lives in a separate apartment on the top floor, where she listens to Billie Holiday records and trades stocks on her computer, only going downstairs when there’s an argument about payment.
    The women arrive in the early evening and leave in the early morning. Most of them work for a year or two, until they can pay off their debt to Mrs Dimitriev, who is so stingy she only turns on the heat in the bedrooms. So the women build big fires and drink lots of hot tea and talk. Not about work, usually – most of the johns are bores, even the dangerous ones. Uncle Blue is the exception, an enigma. The women are only certain of what they can see, so they try to frame their theories around the physical evidence. He is not a young man, though his thick hair and beard are still black. Perhaps it is the beard that reminds Helena of the Islamic fighters she remembers from childhood television, the fierce-looking men carrying AK-47s, bandoliers of ammunition crisscrossing their chests.
    The skin below Uncle Blue’s eyes is dark from weariness, the