Carousel Court Read Online Free PDF Page A

knives.”
    He’s standing over Nick with a thick arm draped on the roof of the car. Heat radiates from his heavy face, a rash on his left cheek. His hair is thinning and slicked back with sweat. The first time they met, Metzger felt compelled to inform Nick that he’s lived in his three-­bedroom house for twelve years, longer than anyone on the block. Before the street was even paved, before the nine identical strips of asphalt and houses were thrown up, before everyone came scrambling in like the little ticks they are to suck the soil dry. There’s not enough water, he said, and his yellowing middle-aged eyes were glazed over. Welcome to the neighborhood. Nick promised they weren’t staying.
    â€œWanna bet?” He laughed and left.
    Metzger’s dog and his wife both died in that house. Metzger had the dog stuffed, and it stands at the foot of the stairs by the front door. He also kept his wife’s body in their bed for four days before calling anyone. And that’s when Nick sees it: Whatever crawls along his shoulder is thick. Metzger brushes at it without looking, and Nick nods absently, waiting. Metzger finally sees it, pinches it, and holds it up in the light from his flashlight. It’s a cicada and it’s buzzing, trying to free itself. Metzger balls it up in his fist, turns, and hurls it into the blackness. He finds a brown shell on the lawn. “They’re everywhere. Look through it.” He holds it up and Nick sees the vertebrae, the eye sockets. “That split on the back, see it, that sliver, that’s where the little shits slither out.” He laughs and crushes the shell in his palm, dusts himself off. “Going to Kostya’s thing?”
    â€œWouldn’t miss it.”
    Metzger’s shaking his head. “Neighborhood barbecue with this bunch. Now, that’s some shit I want to see.”
    Nick grins, close to pulling away.
    â€œI’m an OG!” Metzger yells, laughing, inexplicably using black Southern California slang.
    Nick laughs out loud, pulls away, and then says to himself, “And I’m the new breed.”
    He rolls past the dark and deserted house next door to Metzger’s: The family of four who inhabited it disappeared in the night four weeks ago, leaving behind most of their possessions. They were the first family to drop on Carousel Court. They slipped away before they were locked out or chased out. There would be more. Nick hopes one will be the man next door, suspects it might be the Mormons. He knows Phoebe wanted it to be their own house, to come home one night from ten hours in the car to find a U-Haul backed into the driveway, Nick and Kostya filling it. It wouldn’t matter where they were going, just that they were leaving. Nick knows it’s just as likely that Phoebe will come home to find the locks changed, a conspicuous Day-Glo orange notice on the door from the county sheriff’s department to match the young neighbor’s. It’s a matter of time, months or weeks, he doesn’t know. It requires only one or two late payments these days. It isn’t whether or not it will happen but what he can do that no one else has already thought of or tried, some way to bow out gracefully, his marriage and balls intact.
    â€¢ •
    Traffic is light on the wide streets leading out of Serenos. At a red light, Nick removes a worn black-leather pouch from the glove compartment, drops into it his multi-tool with the three-inch blade and a pair of heavy-duty pliers, and removes the pepper spray and a box cutter. He spent an hour last night on the back patio by the pool sipping Heinekens, a white towel at his feet, his tools aligned just so. With one of Jackson’s old cloth wipes and a small tin of Red Devil oil, he cleaned each of them. He heard nothing when he cleaned his tools: not the young neighbor playing his music too loud; not the plaintive wails of dogs (or were they coyotes?) from the