Beyond the Station Lies the Sea Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    â€œBut what? Didn’t I catch you? Didn’t I almost break my foot doing it? Don’t ever do that again. You could have killed yourself. Now come on already. I’m tired.”
    Cosmos is really angry, and with each step he takes, he grows angrier. He leans on Niner, and his ankle hurts so much that he wants to scream. But he doesn’t scream. Instead, he curses. He leans on Niner and curses colorfully under his breath. It is left to Niner to bear the weight of it all, and the two plastic bags besides.
    â€œYeah, you’re right. I really could have killed myself,” Niner whispers after a while. “And I’ll never do it again, for sure. But could you please stop cursing me out?”
    By the time they reach the condemned house, dawn is breaking. The light creeps slowly across the sky and pales the
moon. Far away, the Fisher and Frost horn blows, and Niner yearns for Mama, yearns for her smell, yearns for her voice, yearns for her so much that tears stream down his cheeks.
    But he won’t let Cosmos see that he’s crying. He turns his head away, crawls under the blanket, and sobs into the pillow until he falls asleep.
    Cosmos turns toward the wall and thinks: Now he’s crying on top of everything, the baby. I’m just going to pretend not to notice. He really is crazy. He’s becoming a ball and chain. I knew it. I’ll never get to the sea with him. Hopefully, my foot won’t hurt so much in the morning.
    And then Cosmos falls asleep too.
    Â 
    WHILE COSMOS AND NINER sleep, dreaming of the sea, and the gulls, and the long journey that will finally start tomorrow, the slot machine in the Caracas keeps ringing and spinning, one combination after another.
    The Queen sits on her bar stool and watches over the men, so they don’t start arguing and fighting and beating each other up.
    While she watches over them, she thinks about the little boy who calls himself Niner, and about his guardian angel, which now belongs to her. And the thought makes her very uneasy.

    â€œI hope you haven’t made a mistake there, Queen,” the waiter remarks, wiping his hands on his grease-stained jacket.
    And the Queen counters, “Joseph, must you wear the entire menu on your coat all the time?”
    â€œNo offense, Queen, no offense,” murmurs Joseph. “We’re not getting any younger, of course, but that thing with the guardian angel wasn’t right. The wee lad needs him, you know, he might not make it without him!”
    She knows that Joseph the waiter is right, somehow. And who would know that better than she?
    But what are you supposed to do? thinks the Queen. What are you supposed to do when someone’s standing there offering you the only thing he owns in exchange for his dream?
    After all, she had been in the same position herself one day back when she was seventeen. Ran away from home. Away from that stinking cow town, where you couldn’t do anything other than dream. Dream of the wide beyond.
    She had stood there herself much like Cosmos and Niner, in the big gray city, with nothing to her name but the gold chain around her neck and her dream of a better life, a house by the sea. But how do you get there, when you don’t even know where you’ll be sleeping that night?
    She would have sold her guardian angel on the spot, but no one was interested in that.

    And so she was forced to earn her money by other means. She sold herself on the street for the sake of her dream. For a better life and a house on the shore. In the big gray city, the girl from the farm turned into the Queen of Caracas. And many men paid a great deal of money along the way.
    As the Queen thinks of all this now, she sits there with a faraway look in her eyes. Joseph sees it and puts a shot of brandy in front of her. Joseph has learned that when she sits there looking like that, brandy’s the only thing that helps.
    The Queen throws the shot back in one