The Dart League King by Keith Lee Morris Read Free Book Online

anxiety taking him at the realization that, soon now, he would have to go back in there and play Brice Habersham again, this time mano a mano , with
the singles championship at stake and maybe the team championship, too (although that seemed less likely, Matt and James were probably in there right now putting the finishing touches on the second doubles game, which would mean the Monsters had to win three of four singles matches to tie the match overall, which was impossible given the fact that the other guys on Brice Habersham’s team were what amounted to dart retards, so that the team thing really wasn’t a factor), it would be a good thing if Kelly Ashton weren’t there. And, also, if she left the bar now and went home, it would mean she hadn’t cared enough about talking to Tristan to wait around. But wouldn’t it also mean she didn’t care enough about the possibility of talking to him ?
    Russell cut down the volume on the tunes—it was a great song, but it sure went on a long time—and took the mirror from Tristan, watching Tristan run his tongue along his upper teeth, listening to him sniff. “How’s it treating you?” Russell said.
    “Can’t tell yet,” Tristan said, and the look on his face made Russell laugh his big, jolly laugh, the laugh that made people like him more than they probably would have otherwise.
    “Give it a minute or two,” Russell said. Tristan didn’t say anything. Russell took his line in one swift snort up the right nostril, shut his eyes tight when they started to water, wiped the mirror clean and put it back through the canopy window, got his nose spray out of the jockey box because he’d need it later.
    “Mind if I have a smoke before we go back in?” Tristan said.
    Russell said sure, and bummed one for himself. He didn’t smoke very often, but he could get used to it if he had to. They
sat there smoking and not talking and staring out the windows at nothing, more or less. Matt was probably on his singles match by now, which meant that Tristan had to get back inside pretty quick, since he was up next. Russell rarely missed any part of one of the league matches, and he tried to remember why he’d asked Tristan to come out to the parking lot in the first place. Something to do with Kelly Ashton, of course, but what had he hoped to accomplish just by getting Tristan out of the bar for ten or fifteen minutes? It wasn’t all that clear.
    “You ever think about living somewhere else?” Tristan asked. He blew a steady stream of smoke from his mouth, his head tilted slightly toward the side window, maybe glancing out at Sand Creek and the marina.
    “No,” Russell said. But actually he had, once. That was back when he was working for the satellite TV company, traveling around the Northwest to put up dishes for hotels and restaurants and other businesses. They had been in Seattle, and the job was installing a huge dish on top of the Bank of America Tower, the tallest building in the city. They worked close to the edge, seventy-six stories above the ground, and Russell was scared to death of the wind, of the almost limitless space he felt around him, the sheer height, the feeling of being so far up in the world. Several times he’d been afraid of blacking out and falling, imagined floating unconscious toward the pavement, dreaming pleasant dreams on the way down, and he had refused the temptation to shut his eyes tight. Only after they’d finished the job had he been able to relax and breathe. He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead and felt the crisp air go in and out of his lungs and suddenly found himself calmly looking around. He was on top of everything. All the
buildings of the city stretched out below him, moving far away and up and down the hills, and there was a ferry out in the Sound, and Mount Rainier high and proud in the haze, and the Space Needle, miraculously, somewhere down below. And he thought for a moment that it was a hell of a city, and that one day he