Dark Mondays Read Online Free PDF

thirty cents in change; she put the sweater on, pocketed the change, and was out of the car with her bag and over the wall behind the gas station in under a minute.
    Fuming, Shadow took an indirect route home, along the alleys behind buildings, along back fences, and crossed over to Camrose behind the American Legion Hall. As she cut across the lot by the garages, she saw a little kid staring at her from the weeds, a boy, red-haired, maybe five or six. Was he lost? She ignored him and scrambled up the hill to her apartment.
* * *
    Now Shadow had to walk down the hill every evening and catch the 81 bus, which ran to no schedule. If the driver felt like arriving early, he did, and made no effort to wait if Shadow hadn’t reached the bus stop yet. If he ran late, he might blow through the Camrose and Highland stop, leaving Shadow screaming obscenities from the bus bench.
    “Doesn’t do any good,” said a man who gave her a ride out to the valley. “Anybody who matters has a car, honey. They figure only losers need the bus to go places, and if they don’t like it, who cares?”
    She was worn out, with the long walks to and from the bus stop. She bought a box of Instant Breakfast, thinking it might give her more energy; but she worried about it putting weight on her, once she read its ingredients, and so about one night in three she went into the employees’ restroom at work and made herself puke it up again. Finally she bought a thermos and filled it with black coffee, and took it with her instead. It got her through the last couple of hours of her shift.
* * *
    The photo enlargements came in and were impressive enough to be encouraging. Shadow bought a portfolio at the art supply store and spent a long day waiting in the outer offices of the art directors of the two local free weeklies. She was told she might want to look into getting a union card; she was told she needed to invest in professional equipment. Everyone agreed, though, that the shot with the baby doll in the ashes was striking.
    “Because, you know why? It’s an illusion,” said the art director at the
Hollywood Free Voice
. She held it up to the light. “There’s no baby there at all, if you look at it closely. It’s just flames, or smoke or something. Really, that’s a hundred-to-one shot.”
    But she didn’t offer to buy it.
    By the time Shadow got out of the
Hollywood Free Voice
office, which was all the way down Santa Monica at Western, there seemed little point in going home to sleep for an hour. There was a coffeehouse by the bus stop; she went in and got an espresso, and sat at one of the tables with her portfolio, flipping once more through the pictures.
    Was
it a baby doll? It was blurred and soft-edged, but you could see the face and the arms, and at least one leg.
    “Damn,” said someone, leaning over her. A hand reached down and pulled out the other shot, the one she’d taken of the burned-out garage. “Nice work. You an adjuster too?”
    “What?” Shadow looked up at him. He was a little older than she, wore glasses, was smoking a cigarette.
    “Are you a claims adjuster?”
    “No,” she said.
    “So, this is just, like, your hobby?” He sat down at her table uninvited. She sized him up: nice clothes. Long-sleeved shirt, narrow tie. He was coked up. He used the same black hair dye she did; she could smell it, under his aftershave.
    “I’m breaking in,” she informed him.
    “Good!” He stuck the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and held out his hand. “Jon Horton. How’s it going?”
    “Shadow,” she said, shaking his hand warily. He put both elbows on the table, took his cigarette out again and had a deep drag on it.
    “See, I’m an insurance adjuster. I take a lot of shots like that but I can’t use them, isn’t that a bitch?”
    “Use them for what?” she asked, wondering if he was gay.
    “I’m publishing a magazine,” he said. “
Negative Pulse
. You’ve heard of it?”
    “Maybe, yeah,” she