Cage of Night Read Online Free PDF

sorry for her at the same time. Her feelings for me were much simpler. She just hated me.
    "You had a visitor. I forgot to tell you."
    "A visitor?"
    "A girl."
    "A girl. Did she have a name?"
    "That cute one who was Homecoming Queen."
    "Why didn't you tell me?"
    "I don't like that tone of voice."
    I sighed. There was no point in arguing with her.
    "When was she here?"
    "Over your dinner hour."
    "What did she say?"
    "That she was looking for you and would I give you that message." A coy smile: "I'm kind of surprised she'd stop by, knowing the kind of guys she could get."
    She'd always be in high school, this one, where the popular kids never had truck with the unpopular ones. I walked away.

    It was cold in the parking lot.
    I spent two minutes scraping rough ice from my windshield. In the meantime, I let the motor run so the car would get warm. Dad had loaned me enough money to buy an old junker Chevrolet. It'd get me back and forth to college. If the heater never exactly warmed up, I had an old blanket on the back seat I could throw over my legs when the thermometer hit zero.
    The seat was cold on my butt and legs, and the motor kept dying, but I got out of the parking lot and onto the street. Though the plow had been down here, the wind was blowing snow hard enough that I had to use windshield wipers. The mercury vapor lights gave the downtown a flat, sterile look. With all the empty storefronts, it resembled one of those places in the rust
    belt where towns just collapsed after the steel mills shut down.
    I fishtailed to a stop at every light. There wasn't much traffic. I passed a cop car parked at a corner. I could see a cop-shape inside but I couldn't make out the face. I wondered if it was Garrett. His first night.
    I didn't want to go home. I had absolutely no place else to go but ever since I'd heard that Cindy had stopped by, a terrible restlessness had come over me. I wanted to tell somebody about her. I'd never had a girl come and ask for me before, and certainly never one as beautiful as Cindy.
    But where would I go?
    I passed a Pizza Hut. The parking lot was crowded with the kind of cars kids drive. I pulled in. In high school, I never went to the places where the popular kids hung out. It always embarrassed me to sit in a booth and watch the golden ones having their fun, as if I'd do anything just to be near them in some way. I was pathetic enough then.
    But Cindy had stopped by for me. That gave me a kind of prestige, even if nobody else knew about it.
    I had a right to go in the god damned Pizza Hut and sit there with the popular kids. I had a right.
    The experience was pretty much the same as it had been back in my high school days. I took a two-seat table in the back and sat there and ate a small cheese pizza by myself. From what I could see, I was the only person in the whole place alone. People looked at me skeptically, as if I had a disease or was going to mug them in the parking lot. The really popular kids merely
    looked through me. I lived in another dimension. I wasn't there.
    He came in just as I was finishing the pizza. He threw the door back and stood just inside, glaring around. He had a lot of snow on his hair and the shoulders of his letter jacket. He was pretty pissed, no doubt about it.
    He started walking up and down the aisles, searching. When he got to me, he just sort of snorted and shook his head. I wasn't even worth real contempt. He smelled of cold air and hot sweat and expensive after-shave.
    By now, a lot of people were watching him.
    Not every night a football star like David Myles comes into the Pizza Hut storming up and down the aisles, looking as if he's ready to kill someone.
    When he got to the back of the place, he walked straight up to the women's toilet, tore open the door and stalked inside.
    A few seconds later, a frightened but silent older woman came out, tugging her skirt down.
    The manager looked at the assistant manager and then the manager gave the assistant manager a