The Altonevers by Frederic Merbe Read Free Book Online Page B

been lusting over
from her perch. The flesh of piggish beasts hanging in the butcher
shop window rise and fall, flailing around as though they're living
for seconds when the jollies roll by. Next door a man floats up
from his chair with half a face full of lather as the barber’s
razor sharply swipes his face clean, each oblivious to by the
habitual hop of their weather’s habit.
    Antique looking glass and detailed
woodwork cover most walls to be seen of this oversized sleepy
little town. They have revolving doors as every entryway, that seem
to be bowing outward and reshaping themselves as the two pass them
by. Strolling the sidewalks of this out of the way Alto, having
only one two lane avenue connecting spliced dead ends and one way
streets.
    “ Enjoying yourself?” he
asks. She ignores him, preferring the levitating people and their
pets. Liking the weave of this peoples clothing and cloths hung on
laundry lines crisscrossing the second story of almost every
building in town. Admiring the passing peoples clothing, some silky
looking scarves hanging in a boutique window.
    “ They really like scarves
here,” she says.
    “ They're alright. Just keep
an open eye, okay.”
    “ I can look after myself.
That one’s nice,” she says pointing to a plaid penguin feather
scarf in a window.
    “ They have nice neck
accessories, but were just passing by.”
    “ Where are we going,
anyway?” she asks.
    “ Down the block and around
the corner. To a gambling house,” he says, liking to see her
pause.
    “ I've never played
before.”
    “ It’ll be fun,” he
says
    “ Do you have money to
gamble?”
    “ Yeah, lots, I've been hot
lately.”
    “ Then, why can't I get a
scarf?” she asks.
    “ We can get one on the way
back, now there’s too few people outside to hide,” he says. A humid
but cool breeze and the pulsing muted yellow light of spring is
disarming the two of any sense of urgency. They come to a well lit
hazel house looking like a neglected country courthouse.
    “ So this is where you've
been all this time, a cat house!?”
    “ A brothel, have some
respect for the craft. They have tables and a band.”
    “ And nude neon women in the
window, real neon ones, dancing.”
    “ It's mostly a gambling
den, never mind what's on display,” he says.
    She rolls her eyes from him to a
brightly lit sign which she reads “The red hen’s house.”
    “ Can we get some food
first? I don’t want to eat there.”
    “ Sure,” he says looking
around. They settle on a push cart manned by a hairy man with
stains on his shirt and a tight vendors cap scooping the middle out
of balls of bread and filling them with a fleshy blue
soup.
    “ What'll it be lady?” the
vendor grunts.
    “ Whatever they’re eating?”
Cider answers.
    “ You mean a
bobber?”
    “ I guess,” she says. The
two watch other people eating and eat it as they do. Dipping the
scooped out bread, sipping the soup, then eating the bowl. They
walk up a filthy red carpet covering a shallow set of stairs
leading into the stochastic saloon's open door. In passing through
heavy purple curtains the enter into the air of countless nights of
the heights of hot streaks, the lows of last pennies lost and lives
put on ice. Mounds and piles of gambling chip shift and spill over
tens of green felt tables, cascading in random sounding crashes
that chirp like birds in a rain forest. A room of more angles than
a house of mirrors, filled with fat drunks and pimps, dogs of men
and women, all of them crooks of some sort. Seated together,
thieving, lying and tricking the money from the pockets of the
person next to them.
    The patrons are crammed through the
large parlor room past capacity, squeezed between islands of green
felt tables and roulette pits haphazardly thrown about a haze of
smoke. Nearly every one of them, from child to adult, is smoking
with their faces obscured but for their cherries flickering in and
out like floating fireflies flashing and fading in a