Lights Out Read Online Free PDF Page A

projects, burned-out buildings, and empty lots overrun with garbage. The avenue itself looked narrower, more run-down than Jake had remembered. An angry mother was pulling her sloppily dressed kids along the sidewalk, a homeless guy was sleeping in a refrigerator box, and burnouts sat on stoops and garbage cans, staring at nothing. Awnings, brick walls, and bus shelters were filthy and covered with graffiti. When Jake was growing up, the neighborhood had been a working-class mix of blacks and whites; now it was almost all black, and it didn’t look as working-class either. Maybe it wasn’t the worst neighborhood in the city, but give it a couple of years and it would be another East New York.
    Jake decided it was time to get his parents the hell out of Brooklyn. He’d buy them a fucking condo in the city and send them the key. Or maybe move them out to LA, get them digs on the beach in Santa Monica or somewhere out there. Meanwhile, he’d keep it mellow this weekend - stay inside most of the time, set the wedding date with Christina, then split. Hopefully after this weekend he’d never have to visit his old neighborhood again.
    As the car turned onto East Eighty-first Street, Jake was getting that closed-in feeling again, probably because the street was lined with butt-ugly attached brick houses with tall stoops and no front lawns. He couldn’t wait to get out of the car, to stretch, and then he saw the crowd ahead. There were maybe two hundred people on the street, and tables set up with food and drinks, and a big banner hung over the street that read, WELCOME HOME JAKE, OUR HERO . The car double-parked, and a swarm of kids, most wearing THOMAS 24 jerseys and Pirates caps, surrounded it, cheering as if it were bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, two out, game seven of the World Series.
    Thinking that he was going to kill his parents for this, Jake got out of the car, giving the crowd his best Hollywood smile.

Three
    The paint job was going much faster than Ryan had expected, probably because he and the guys didn’t screw around all day the way they usually did. Actually, they didn’t talk much at all, and, without talking, there was nothing to do but work. By five o’clock they had finished all the wall repair and laid on the primer in the entire house, and Carlos had even put on a first coat in the dining room. Ryan was cleaning his brushes in the kitchen sink when Franky came in.
    ‘Hey, just wanted to say sorry for before,’ Ryan said.
    ‘Sorry for what?’
    ‘All that bullshit I pulled. It’s got nothing to do with you. I just have a lot on my mind - personal shit, you know?’
    ‘Eh, forget about it,’ Franky said, smiling.
    Driving home, Ryan listened to rap on a college station at the end of the dial. An ad came on for a Ja Rule concert at the Garden next month, and Ryan decided he’d go online later and buy two tickets. Christina hated rap - unless it was Will Smith or, after she saw
8 Mile,
Eminem. She’d definitely bitch about going to the concert, but Ryan knew he could convince her. Maybe they’d make a weekend of it - rent a hotel room in the city, like they sometimes did. But in the past Christina had had to tell her dad she was going to spend the weekend at her friend Nancy’s in the Village, and Ryan would make up some story for his parents, and then they’d meet in a hotel room in Midtown. This time they wouldn’t have to make up any lies or worry about being seen together. Finally they could be a real couple, able to hold hands and kiss in public, do whatever the hell they wanted. Ryan would pick her up at her house, then they’d drive into the city and spend most of the weekend in bed, making love, except on Saturday night, when they’d go catch Ja.
    Ryan couldn’t imagine a better two days.
    At Flatlands Avenue, Ryan turned right, passing South Shore High School. As usual, he tried not to look to his left as he drove by the athletic field; sometimes he drove home a different way,