Come Destroy Me Read Online Free PDF

are you reading now?” He looked at the worn book under her arm, the red cover with the rubbed-out gold lettering he could not read because of the bad light in the street.
    “This? This is a book of A. E. Housman. Are you familiar with the poems of Housman?”
    “I read one or two,” he said, “I think.”
    She recited a line: “Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover,” and she sighed. She said, “I am immensely fond of A. E. Housman.”
    Charlie thought she was lovely and mysterious and that it would be very hard to ever understand her and he must try very hard. She was different from anyone he had ever talked to before. She was like someone from a book or movie, someone unreal who did not belong with real people. He thought of the date of this day and decided he would remember it. He would mark it down in the flyleaf of a book and put “J” after it. Then he would know always when it had happened, when he had first talked with her.
    Under a lamppost on Evans Street three of the younger boys from Azrael High were sitting on their bikes talking. They whistled when Charlie walked by with her and one of them said, “Who’s your gal, Charlie?” and another yelled, “Hold me closer. Closer, I say. Closer!” All three laughed raucously at this, and Charlie could feel his face hot and red.
    Jill Latham said, “They all seem to be like that. Young — but invariably, children. Wild. No tenderness.”
    Charlie had never heard anyone speak of tenderness. It was true. It was what he thought put into words by her. He thought that she must understand everything. Everything.
    The house on Deel Street was a brown frame house with a white porch and white steps and a white glider on the porch. There was a light burning in the hallway and Charlie thought that it was a big house for her to live in all alone, with a downstairs
and
an upstairs. She turned to him where the sidewalk to her house and the sidewalk they were on formed a ? and she said, “I wonder if you would enjoy a soft drink.”
    “Sure.”
    “It’s a warm night,” she said. “Come along, then.”
    She walked ahead of him up the wooden steps, holding the screen door open for him, and he followed her inside. The smell of the house was not like her. It had a damp salt smell, and the furniture was old-fashioned and worn. She led him into the parlor, a small room with several cushioned rockers, a shaggy red couch, a table beside it with a bowl lamp, the bulb covered with a scorched green lamp shade. On the floor there was a record player, the kind that was wound with a crank handle, and a single record was placed on the turntable. The rug was so worn that the pattern was a vague resemblance to great yellow flowers, and the edges were frayed. Framed landscapes, yellowed with age, hung on the walls, which were papered in faded line crosses, and the paint at the window sills was peeling.
    “I’ll be a moment,” she said, “only a moment. You just make yourself comfortable.”
    Charlie sat down uneasily on the red couch and stared about the room. He felt embarrassed for her and sorry for her and he thought, What does a house matter anyway? It’s not her fault. It was left to her. The only thing in the room that was like her was the books, row upon row of books on the wall opposite him, and in the corner some were stacked on the floor. He looked at his watch and saw that it was nine-twenty, and he wondered what they would say to one another and how long he would stay. It was sad to be there but he was glad he was the one, because it didn’t matter to him that the house was old and ghostlike, and not like a house where she would live.
    When she came back into the room, she was carrying a bottle of pop and a glass of ginger ale. She handed him the bottle. “Boys,” she said, “like it from the bottle, don’t they?”
    “Sure.”
    She sat down beside him and he could smell the lilacs again, and another smell he could not be sure of. She smoothed her skirt