Hard Light Read Online Free PDF Page B

distance, and a lone black SUV idled in front of a doorway. Stoned, bewildered kids stumbled along the sidewalks, looking like they’d missed the last boat from Pleasure Island. Without the wig, Krishna’s own hair was a tangled mass of cinnamon-colored curls. A few kids recognized her—recognized her as someone they should recognize, anyway—but their gazes slid over me as though I were a reflection in a darkened window. The few times someone caught my eyes, they recoiled.
    â€œThey’re scared of you.” Krishna’s tone was admiring. “I could do with some of that.”
    â€œGive it thirty years,” I said.
    We hurried down a flight of stone steps to a narrow path alongside the Regent’s Canal. Trash floated on the sluggish water. Boats resembling anorexic barges were tied up beside the path. Krishna pointed at the opposite bank. “My place is just over there.”
    I saw only shadows cast by the thick curtains of ivy that covered the walls beside the path. The thrum of traffic had diminished to the faint buzz of a trapped fly. Something darted from the underbrush and disappeared into the night. I froze, looked over to see Krishna staring at me.
    â€œYou all right?” she asked.
    I nodded and croaked, “Yeah. Sorry.”
    Years ago I’d been raped in a place like this—three AM shadows, an echo of drunken laughter as I stumbled home from CBGB, shitfaced and barefoot and alone. I still have the scars left by a zipknife above my crotch, tangled with the tattoo I got a few years later: TOO TOUGH TO DIE.
    Ever since that night, I can sense damage, smell it like an acrid pheromone seeping from the pores of people around me. The wrong kind of street, the wrong kind of light, and the stink of my own terror floods my throat and nostrils. It’s why I can read photos the way I do, like they’re tarot cards or the I Ching. Because that’s what photography is—or was, before the advent of digital—damage, the corrosive effect that sunlight has on chemicals and a prepared surface.
    Krishna hooked her arm through mine, tottering on her platform shoes. “Come on,” she urged.
    We walked beneath an arched bridge that stank of piss, its security lights blurring Krishna into a blue-gray shadow at my side. When we emerged from the passage, I followed her up a set of stairs back to the street, where we crossed the bridge to the other side of the canal.
    An ugly apartment block of council housing rose behind a gate, rows of identical windows looking onto minuscule balconies crammed with bicycles and flowerpots and gas grills, empty pet carriers and plastic chairs. Krishna punched a code into a security panel. We passed through the gate and entered the building.
    â€œMy flat looks like a tip,” she said, as we walked down a corridor that stank of cigarette smoke and industrial cleaning fluid. “Lance left all his shit, I told him I’d toss it in the canal.”
    She stopped in front of a door and spent most of a minute searching through the pockets of her plaid coat. Frustrated, she thrust a key at me.
    â€œHere. I can never get it to work.”
    I jimmied the lock, and the door opened. “That’s why I keep him around,” Krishna said absently. “He can always get the door open.”
    The flat was not much larger than a walk-in closet, and resembled Fresh Kills on a busy day. Clothes strewn everywhere, along with wigs, gig flyers, takeaway cartons, empty vodka bottles, and several plastic ukuleles. Two silvery, thigh-length boots protruded from a heap of clothing, giving the impression that a robot was buried there, or maybe Gene Simmons. It smelled of unwashed clothes and skunk weed and fenugreek, with that pervasive base note of vodka and lime.
    Krishna swept a mound of clothes from a small couch. “You can sleep here.”
    I sank onto the couch, my satchel at my feet. If I lost sight of it, I’d never find it