Inside a Silver Box Read Online Free PDF

the history of the world has. Not even the Silver Box could do it unless it destroyed everything else.”
    Ronnie wondered about himself listening to the young woman with the crazy multicolored eyes. It came to him that he had hardly ever listened to anything but the hunger in his heart. He sometimes listened to his mother, but only when she held him could she could dispel the roar of his cravings.
    Lorraine understood his emotions. For her, he was the most important being that had ever existed—but this didn’t stop her from hating him, just a little.
    “Let’s go to that thrift sto’ and get some clothes,” he said.
    *   *   *
    R ONNIE WAITED PATIENTLY while Lorraine tried on one dress after another. There were stripes and bright colors, little black numbers and a few skirts with blouses. With each new ensemble, she’d come out from behind the thrift store dressing screen and do a twirl, asking for his advice.
    “I don’t know,” he’d say, “looks nice.”
    And she’d be off again.
    He picked out a pair of dark brown work pants and a short-sleeved yellow dress shirt. He also bought a pair of blunt-toed brown leather shoes.
    “I don’t know why I can’t make up my mind,” she said after trying on the eighth or ninth getup. “I usually just take the first thing I see—that or I know what I want before I get to the store.”
    “It’s okay,” he said. “I could sit on this stool just as well as anywhere else. I mean, where I got to go?”
    Lorraine took the question seriously. She stared at her savior and murderer, considering the reply. She was trying on a mid-calf light blue dress with white frill along the high neck.
    “We need to clean up and talk about what’s happened,” she said. “I’ll take this dress and those red flats and we can go.”
    “Where?” Ronnie asked.
    “I guess we could go to my place,” she speculated, “but…”
    “What?”
    “I don’t know. I mean it didn’t feel like it, but it’s been weeks since you, since you killed me.” Speaking the words out loud sent a shiver through her mind and a chill across her heart. “I guess I don’t want to see anybody I know for a little bit.”
    *   *   *
    T HEY CHECKED INTO the huge and fancy Halsey Hotel at 4:15 that Tuesday afternoon. They got a room with two single beds and a window that looked out into an internal ventilation shaft.
    Lorraine showered first and came out wrapped only in a plush white towel. Ronnie looked at her long runner’s legs and her once pale now olive skin. If this were two days ago, he knew, he would have been on her in a minute— on that pussy like motherfucker . But that was before his hunger was satisfied by pouring out his insides like cereal into the empty bowl named Lorraine Fell.
    “You want to have sex with me?” Lorraine asked.
    “Why you say that?”
    “The way you’re looking.”
    “Just rememberin’,” he said. “Rememberin’ how I used to be day before yesterday.”
    He had already seen himself in the full-length bathroom mirror.
    He was still about five-ten but his girth had gone from extra-extra-large to just about medium. The scale at Rikers had said that he was 289 pounds when he was released. The hotel scale read 168. His skin, if anything, was a little bit darker and his right eye was now green. Even his big fat-fingered hands had slimmed down and tapered. He looked to himself like he knew something and he wondered what that something was.
    “Just remembering?” Lorraine asked.
    “I was wonderin’ how much you weighed.”
    “The scale in there says one oh nine.”
    *   *   *
    R ONNIE SHOWERED AND then dressed, returned to the room and saw that Lorraine had had the kitchen send up a platter of two dozen chicken wings with blue cheese dressing and a fruit bowl. There was also a big bottle of water and a pail of ice.
    He ate two wings while Lorraine devoured the rest.
    “Looks like I gave you my appetite along with everything else,” he