The Dirty Parts of the Bible by Sam Torode Read Free Book Online Page A

a damn about luxury anymore—I was ready to sleep in the hallway. But I staggered on like a drunkard till I found my room number. I rattled the key in the door, kicked it open, flung my pack on the floor, threw off my coat, yawned, and—without even turning on the light—lunged for the bed.
    The bed was not as soft as I expected. In fact, it felt like there was something hard under the blankets. And that something seemed to be moving . Then it cursed. “Get the hell off me, you filthy bastard!”
    Fingers clawed at my face and knees kicked at my groin. I tumbled off the bed, knocked over a lamp , and got tangled in the electrical cord. “I’m so sorry,” I pleaded from the floor. “I thought this was my room—number eight—the number on the—”
    “What do you think I am, a trampoline?”
    “Why no—that is—let me—”
    I propped the lamp back up, extracted my legs from the cord, and tried to get a handle on the situation. Either I had the wrong room, or this girl had the wrong bed.
    One thing was certain—she wasn’t happy about it. “I keep saying—no more drunks. And what does she send up? Some shit-faced punk . . . ”
    When I fixed the shade back on the lamp, she leaned over and clicked it on. The girl looked younger than she sounded—maybe sixteen or seventeen—with a powdered round face, bright red lips, blonde curls, and dark Theda Bara eyes. Her shoulders were bare, and she was wearing nothing but a sheet below them.
    I backed up against the door and felt for the handle.
    She looked me up and down. “My, you’re a young one. I think I’ll call you babyface.”
    She was calling me young? I gripped the doorknob, ready to run.
    She straightened out the blankets and pillows around her. “Well, aren’t you going to sit down?”
    I was confused—if this was her room, why did she want me to stay? And if it was my room, why didn’t she get out?
    “Don’t stand there looking stupid, babyface.”
    I eased over to a wingback chair in the corner, ready to sort things out. “The lady downstairs told me room eight,” I started.
    The girl frowned and slapped the edge of the bed. “Over here , silly.” That’s when it dawned on me where I was—and what she was.
    Temptress. Harlot. Whore. The words I’d heard in a thousand sermons echoed in my head. This was the sort of girl Father had always warned me about.
    She didn’t look particularly loose or fallen, whatever that meant. She was kind of cute, actually. I sat on the far end of the bed, with my back to her, then twisted around sideways.
    She laughed. “Shy, are we? What’s your name, babyface?”
    I wondered whether I should make something up, but I was too tired to get creative. “Tobias. Tobias Henry.”
    She scooted up against the headboard, a sheet still covering her chest. “Tobias . . . that sounds like something out of the Bible.”
    My face turned red. “No. There’s no Tobias in the Bible.”
    She snapped her fingers. “I got it—you’re another one from the Bible college, ain’t you?”
    “I don’t read the Bible.” My mouth twitched. “I don’t even believe in God.” The evangelist’s Bible was still in my pack, crying out against me.
    Desperate to change the subject, I asked the first question that came to mind. “Say, are you a Harvey girl?”
    She crossed her arms. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “I don’t know. I just thought—”
    “No, I’m a fucking Sister of Charity,” she said. This girl could out-cuss my Mama.
    I asked the next thing that came to mind. “Are you French?”
    “Look, babyface. I don’t get paid to answer stupid questions.” With that, she hurled a pillow. I ducked and it glanced off my shoulder.
    When I looked at her again, the sheet was down around her waist and her breasts were there right in the open, dangling like golden apples. My mouth fell open. I could only bear to look for a second, then I took a sudden interest in the wallpaper pattern.
    “What’s the