Cost of Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

to Moonbeam and stared out with her old-soul eyes at their front lawn, all wheat yellow save for the weeds. The weeds were green. The weeds were thriving.
    Moonbeam upended Xana’s can and choked and then coughed and then spat out the wet remains of Xana’s third cigarette into her palm. What came next out of her mouth was a series of colorful, euphonious Hindi epithets, ending with: “If I weren’t a pacifist, I’d punch you in the brain.”
    To which Xana responded, in perfect Hindi: “I’d like to see you try, bitch.”
    Moonbeam reeked of patchouli and mint and decades of nude beaches had transformed her subcontinent skin to rich Corinthian leather but she had a soothing voice and when used to sing one of her self-composed songs, even the dust paid attention. Her voice was a warm blanket on a cool night and the only real reason Xana hated Moonbeam was because Moonbeam was here at this house and Xana really hated this house—except that wasn’t the whole story either…
    “How do you know Hindi?” asked Moonbeam. “You are not Indian.”
    “I also know Spanish, but I’ve never been to Spain. No, that’s a lie. I’ve been to Spain. Want a cigarette?”
    “My body is a temple.”
    “My body is an amusement park.”
    “Alice is in the kitchen listening to her police scanner at full volume. Again.”
    Xana flicked her Bic and held the flame up to the sun.
    Moonbeam continued, “Why do you think she does that? The police are nothing more than bullies with badges.”
    Xana shut her lighter and tucked it back in the breast pocket of her loose silk blouse. The shirt was an oldie but goodie. The red-and-yellow MANCHESTER UNITED insignia on the breast pocket had faded with time and the stitching had come loose, but the red devil was still to all appearances a red devil and the words were as readable now as they were almost twenty years ago when she bought the shirt at a street fair in Istanbul. Her blue jeans, bought a year ago at the mall, were in much worse shape.
    “Is it pretty?” asked Moonbeam.
    “Is what pretty?”
    “Spain.”
    “It’s the same as everywhere else—as pretty as you want it to be.”
    “You’d have to be higher than the sun to think this neighborhood is pretty.”
    “That must be why there are so many crack houses. But none of us are here by choice, are we?”
    Moonbeam shook her head no. Her long gray hair whipped back and forth like legs.
    “Someday I think I’d like to go to Spain,” she said.
    “The last time I was there, I watched a man jump off the nave of a thousand-year-old cathedral.”
    “Why?”
    “Because he didn’t want to get shot. In the end, I guess you could say he was lucky.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “He didn’t get shot.”
    Xana stood up—and up and up, nearly six feet tall from pigeon toes to crow’s-feet. She headed inside the house and followed its short and narrow corridors to the white noise emanating from Alice’s police scanner, which was propped on the birchwood countertop right beside the sink and its leaning towers of dirty dishes. Alice, in a wife-beater that effectively showed off her full sleeves of tattoos, sat at the three-legged table and stared into space for a thousand yards, her pupils oscillating on their own.
    “Officer down on I Seventy-Five S,” she told the air. She had the tone of voice of a lobotomy.
    Xana opened the pantry door to scrounge for food from the sparsely populated shelves. She found a box of unsalted wheat crackers and brought it to the table.
    “When?” she asked Alice.
    “A little while ago.”
    “Is the officer going to be OK?”
    “No,” Alice said flatly. “She’s dead.”
    Xana chewed on a cracker. It tasted like a cigarette butt. She brimmed with sympathy for Moonbeam.
    “They have an APB out for a suspect named Laurence Walder.”
    “Sounds like Laurence Walder is about to have a well-earned very bad day.” Xana scooted over to the fridge and checked the Styrofoam container on the top shelf