Candy Read Online Free PDF Page A

boy.”
    “Nothing,” I said, swallowing hard.
    “Nothing?” he said. “You paying good money for nothing?”
    “No…” I muttered. “I didn’t mean—”
    “You paid the girl?”
    I wanted to say, Paid her? Paid her for what? I haven’t paid her for anything, but she’d already told him I had, and I could feel her looking at me, begging me not to say anything different.
    So I said, “Uh…yeah…yeah, I paid…”
    “You ain’t paid her for nothing,” Iggy said, looking at Candy like a butcher looking at meat. “You ain’t doing nothing with a piece like that. Not less you got something wrong with you. You got something wrong with you?”
    “No.”
    “You fishy?”
    “I don’t know—”
    “You don’t know? ”
    I looked down at the table.
    “Hey,” said Iggy, “look at me when I’m talking to you. Look at me.”
    I looked up. He was smiling now, his mouth a blackened cave rimmed with gold-capped teeth.
    “Look at her,” he told me.
    “What?”
    “Look at the bitch.”
    I looked at Candy. She was lifeless, moist-eyed, staring blankly at the table.
    “You like it?” Iggy said. “You want it?”
    I couldn’t answer.
    He laughed at me, a cold hissing sound. “How much?” he said.
    “I don’t—”
    “How much you give her?”
    I looked at Candy again.
    “Don’t look at her,” Iggy said. “Look at me. I asked you how much.”
    I shook my head.
    “All right,” he said. “What d’you pay for?”
    “She was—”
    “She tell you what it is, yeah? You know what you’re getting?”
    “I was just—”
    “What? You was just what? ”
    “All right,” Candy said quietly. “That’s enough.”
    Iggy went silent. He kept on staring at me for a moment, sucking thoughtfully on his cheek, then he sniffed hard and turned to Candy.
    “You what?” he said, raising an eyebrow.
    She could barely look at him now—head down, eyes hidden, hands fiddling nervously with a small piece of card in her lap, rolling it into a tube, unrolling it, twisting it, folding it…
    “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I was just talking to him, that’s all. I didn’t…We didn’t…He’s just a kid. He doesn’t know anything.”
    Iggy said nothing.
    Candy smiled through her tears. “It won’t happen again—”
    “Too right,” Iggy said coldly.
    “You don’t have to—”
    “What?”
    “Nothing…I’m sorry. Please don’t—”
    “Shut up.” He turned to me and cocked his head at the door. “Out.”
    I stared dumbly at him.
    “Get out,” he repeated. “Now.”
    I looked at Candy, then back at Iggy again. “Look,” I tried to explain, “it wasn’t her fault…”
    But he wasn’t listening.
    His face had hardened and he was starting to get up. I was too shocked to move. All I could do was sit there and watch as he got to his feet and straightened up and…God, he was big. He was enormous. Big, tall, heavy, wide, hard, rock-solid…he towered over the table like a steel black giant.
    As he kicked his chair back and started moving toward me, Candy suddenly leaned across and shoved me in the side.
    “No! ” she said desperately, looking at Iggy. “No, it’s all right…Look, he’s going. He’s going now. You don’t have to do anything. See? He’s going.” She glanced at me, her eyes pleading for me to go, but she needn’t have bothered—I was already halfway to my feet. Candy reached for my chair. I felt her hand brush my thigh, then she quickly moved back to her seat and looked up at Iggy again. Still standing over me, he glared at her, his jaw set tight beneath his skin, and for a moment I thought he was going to kill her. I could see it in his eyes. He was going to kill her, and then me…I really believed it. Eventually, though—after what seemed like an age—his face began to relax and he slowly sank back into his seat.
    “Lucky boy,” he said quietly.
    I stepped back from the table and steadied myself against a chair. My legs were shaking and my throat was tight. I