Isle of Dogs Read Online Free PDF

become invisible. She followed the cobblestone of Shockhoe Slip and slipped inside Tobacco Company, an upscale restaurant and bar in a renovated old tobacco warehouse not far from the river. Unique sat near the piano and ordered a beer and began to smoke as she relived last night.
    Acting as a decoy for the highway pirates was getting boring, if she were to be honest about it. The road dogs she had begun to associate with months ago were small-minded and stoned most of the time. Their leader, in particular, was frying his brain with booze and pot and was so out of it that Uniqueno longer bothered having sex with him. She tapped an ash and signaled the waitress to bring another beer as she felt the stare of a woman sitting alone at the bar.
    “You from out of town?” the woman asked, and her strong energy and hot eyes registered clearly on Unique’s sexual radar.
    “In and out,” Unique evasively replied with her sweet smile.
    “Oh.” The woman got up and marveled over this pretty woman’s unique way of expressing herself. “Mind if I join you?” She set her beer down on Unique’s table and pulled out a chair. “My name’s T. T., which is really funny now that this Trooper Truth stuff is all over the place. You won’t believe it, but people who know me and even strangers all of a sudden got this crazy notion that my initials T.T. stand for Trooper Truth, and just because I wrote for my high school newspaper, I’m supposedly Trooper Truth but don’t want anybody to know!”
    Unique held T. T.’s gaze and sipped beer.
    “Well, I’m not,” T.T. went on. “But I wish like hell I was because that’s the new mystery in this town: Who is Trooper Truth? What’s the truth about Trooper Truth? Like he’s Robin Hood or something. You got any guesses? And you sure have amazing hair. You must brush it all the time.”
    “I don’t know,” Unique replied as T. T. bounced her foot and fidgeted nervously like a schoolboy with a crush. “My car’s broke down. Maybe you could give me a ride home?”
    “Sure!” T.T. said. “Hey, no problem. Man, you got such a quiet voice. Sorry about your car. Man, that’s such a bitch when your car fucks up, you know?”
    T. T. continued to rattle on as she smacked a ten-dollar bill on the bar and put on her leather biker’s jacket. She usually wasn’t this successful when she tried to pick up women, but it was about damn time her luck changed. T.T. worked for the state and had to wear dresses and other feminine attire in the office, where no one knew the truth about her private life. So the only opportunity she had for assuaging her loneliness was to dress the part and hang out in bars at night and on weekends. This was expensive and largely unproductive, and herhands were shaking with excitement as she let Unique into her old Honda.
    “Which way?” T.T. asked as she pulled out onto Cary Street.
    “Let’s go down to the dock, you know, off Canal. I love looking at the river. We’ll walk on Belle Island,” Unique replied in her tiny, hushed voice as her Purpose, as she thought of it, throbbed inside her and a slow burn of ancient rage began to consume her brain.
    Minutes later, she and T. T. got out of the Honda and stood along the water, the chilled September air blowing Unique’s hair like black fire. There wasn’t another person around and it vaguely penetrated Unique’s spell that T.T. was incredibly stupid to wander off with a perfect stranger, and how dare she just assume that Unique was of her persuasion and would be interested. How incredibly stupid the other ones had been, too. Unique took T.T.’s hand and they walked over a footbridge that led to Belle Island, where Union soldiers had been imprisoned during the Civil War. The island was densely wooded and cut with bike paths and trails. Unique pulled T. T. behind a tree and began to kiss and fondle her into a frenzy.
    “I want you to have a unique experience,” Unique whispered as she dug her tongue into