Hot Pink in the City Read Online Free PDF

radio."
    What I would do if he were my brother, but I
can't do anything. I'm in his home. I swallow a lump in my throat.
All the balls are in his corner. I already thought I paid for his
affections and his silence not too long ago, but I didn't give him
enough. He wants more. But what more can we give him?
    "So which tape did you break?" he asks. "And
how? Did it snap in two while you were playing it? Did you record
over it? What happened? What singer was it?"
    He lists all the possibilities of what can
happen to a fragile tape, but we're not telling him anything.
"Don't worry about it," I say.
    "I'm not going to be quiet about this. What
can the two of you do for me? Huh? And make it snappy, because I
have a busy evening ahead of me."

Chapter Five
     
    Nasreen and I sit in her room eating lokum , aka Turkish delight. It's this gelatinous, sweet
thing covered with powder with nuts inside. The powder falls onto
my lap and it's even funnier on Nasreen, who's dressed in black.
She looks upset, although the powder across her mouth, chin, and
shirt look comical. Sitting on the floor of her room, we have to
cheer ourselves up somehow. Auntie doesn't have chocolate on hand
in the kitchen, but there's lokum.
    A chair stands in front of the door so Omar
can't snoop on us any longer. He's the reason we're glum and eating
sugar. He demanded twenty dollars, so both of us are ten dollars
poorer. He didn't even know all the details of our crime, but the
looks on our faces and our hiding in Nasreen's room tipped him off
that we did something bad.
    I might end up completely poor by the time I
leave if Omar consistently blackmails us. He promised to stay
silent about the broken tape with this twenty-dollar fee, but I
don't trust him. He'll always have this thing to hold over our
heads. And if I keep losing money, I'll definitely never ever get
Madonna tickets. There's no use asking Uncle if I can even go if I
don't have the money, and it would raise my parents' suspicions if
I were to ask them for more money. If they stick some bills in an
envelope, I'll get it in a few days, but I can't ask. Mom and Dad
thought they had given me adequate funds for this trip. And some
trip it is. I just got here and I'm already miserable. The
excitement of the city and the possibilities within it disappear.
Omar's smug face, my lighter wallet, and the Kulthum tape I
destroyed swim in my head.
    Not only is a tin can of lokum by us, but we
also have Uncle's radio. No longer wanting to be in the living
room, a stone's throw from Omar's curtained alcove, we took the
radio so we can use it in the privacy of Nasreen's room. I have a
blank tape -- an actual blank tape this time -- sitting on
Nasreen's dresser, but I'm not in the mood to do any recording.
Listening to Madonna would put me in a better mood, but I don't
have the will to find her music. Also, with Auntie around, I don't
know if she'll barge in and ruin things -- we barricaded the door,
so she might pound on it with one fist while a spoonful of food is
in the other. Not only do we need Uncle out of the way, but we need
Auntie out of the apartment too, although it seems like she never
leaves.
    I hear the clash of pots and pans as she
finishes making dinner. "We need to put all this stuff away,"
Nasreen mumbles. "My dad is a creature of habit, and, looking at
the clock, he should be here any minute."
    Instead of being afraid that he's coming,
that he'll find us with his radio in the bedroom instead of in the
living room, where there's a dent in the carpet from its bulk
sitting there constantly, I'm slow to move. I lift the radio, move
the chair aside, and walk into the living room. The dent is dark
against light beige. I put the radio back on the carpet, between
the sofa and entertainment system, and it fits inside the dent
perfectly. I'm laying this radio to rest. It brought us to no good
this afternoon.
    The phone rings, and Auntie rushes to it, as
if she's going to miss something important. She doesn't