Hymn Read Online Free PDF Page B

fumes.
    â€˜Celia?’ he said, knowing that she wasn’t there, but drunk enough to defy reality. ‘Celia, I love you, for Chrissake! Don’t you know that? Celia!’
    Celia didn’t answer, Celia was gone, burned in a carpark on Rosecrans Avenue. Tomorrow he would see her body for himself, and then maybe he would be able to accept it. He slept, with his mouth hanging open, and dreamed that he was arguing with his realtors. You said there was a conversation pit. This isn’t a conversation pit, it’s a grave. Then he dreamed about the restaurant kitchens. Louis was stirring the fish stock, oblivious to the giant lobsters that crawled and heaved and clattered around the floor, blue-black and glistening, slowly waving their claws at him. The swing doors swung. Ee-urk-ee-urk! There was somebody behind him, running away from him. He pushed his way into the corridor. The restaurant was blazing. All around him, naked women were running screaming in all directions, with their hair alight. Eeeeeeeeeee!!!!
    He opened his eyes. He was still drunk, but he was conscious that he had heard a noise. He lay still, tense, listening. A creak, a rustle, a hollow-cheeked whisper like the draught of a door opened, and then closed. He listened even more intently.
    Something dropped with a thud, and rolled. Then a drumming, tumbling noise. Lloyd swung his legs out of bed, and made his way unsteadily out of the bedroom door, jarring his shoulder painfully on the doorframe.
    Shit, that hurts. He may have said it out loud. He stopped, swayed, almost lost his balance, listened.
    The house was silent. But he was sure that he could feel something, feel somebody moving. He was sure that he could sense somebody breathing. He was supposed to be alone, wasn’t he, now that Celia had gone, and yet he was sure that he wasn’t.
    His next-door neighbour, Hal Pinkerton, had always nagged him about buying himself a gun. Now he wished very much that he had listened. He could imagine a six-foot sixteen-stone black junkie with sweaty muscles and a Rambo knife waiting for him in the living-room, next to the conversation-pit that was more like a grave.
    He patted the wall, searching for the lightswitch. He found it, and switched it on. He stood blinking at an empty living-room. Nobody there. Only the painted face of the Mexican woman, with her unbought lemons. Only rugs and floors and furniture.
    When he looked over toward the grand piano, however, he realized that something was different. All of the scrimshaw had disappeared. Twenty or thirty pieces of carved whale-ivory, which Celia had carefully and artistically arranged on the piano-lid. Now the top of the piano was completely bare.
    Lloyd went up to the piano and laid his hands flat on the lid. Cool and shiny and white as death. The Chinese always said that death was white. He looked around, but nothing else seemed to be missing. Who the hell would risk breaking into a house for the sake of a couple of dozen pieces of scrimshaw?
    He went through to the kitchen. The back door was wide open, and the cool night air was flowing in. He could smell the sea. Cautiously, he edged open one of the kitchen drawers and took out his largest Sabatier butcher-knife. He stepped out on to the back porch, bricks under bare feet, and strained his eyes in the darkness.
    He thought he glimpsed something, out by the avocado trees beyond the patio. Something that flickered quick and pale.
    There was no logical reason for it, but he was suddenly gripped with a terrible sense of dread.
    Don’t be ridiculous. Whoever it was, they’ve gone. Some spaced-out kid, most likely, looking for crack money.
    He called out, ‘Who’s there?’ But he didn’t really expect a reply. What was a burglar going to say? ‘It’s me, don’t worry. Just been doing a bit of burgling.’
    He thought he heard a faint rustling in the undergrowth by the back fence, but he couldn’t be