Lights Out Read Online Free PDF

counter, sipping, chewing, talking, doing the crossword. Then he noticed the bus station next door. A Greyhound Americruiser was scrolling through its destinations: Jax, Atlanta, Baltimore, Philly, NY. Eddie walked toward it. Ordinary walking. Didn’t mean a thing. He just felt like going that way and he did. A long stretch, he thought. Comparatively, as Dr. Messer had said. Especially comparatively for an innocent man.
    A red convertible stopped nearby. A woman got out. She had thick black hair, red lips, smooth double-cream-coffee skin, long legs, and a short black leather skirt. Eddie couldn’t take his eyes off her. She was coming his way. Eddie forced himself to stop staring, turned toward the bus station.
    “Hey you!”
    Eddie kept going.
    “Hey, you!”
    Was she calling him? He turned back.
    “Me?”
    She laughed. She was close now, still coming toward him, her breasts jiggling under a little halter top, nipples protruding, hips swelling under the leather skirt: all these details spun through Eddie’s mind in confusion. “Yeah, you,” she said. “Wanna have some fun?”

Outside: Day 1

3
    F un. Eddie stood in the glare under the madly chirping bird, his eyes on a vision of everything Prof’s porno shot strove for (so unsuccessfully, he now realized): a vision of irresistible and available female sexuality. It wasn’t just a function of those physical images still careening through his brain—hair, lips, skin, breasts, hips, thighs—but of the voice too. The voice especially. There was something arousing about the female voice, all by itself. Or was it just long deprivation of the sound that made him react like that?
    She was looking at him funny. “What’s the matter? You don’t speak English?”
    Christ, Eddie thought, I’m slow. Inside, fast, but out here, very slow. “Yeah. I speak English.”
    “Whoop-dee-do,” said the woman. “We’ve got something in common already.” She swung open the passenger door of the red convertible, her ass, solid and round, bunching slightly with the effort. “Let’s roll.”
    Eddie’s mouth was dry. He licked his lips. “Roll?”
    She looked at him funny again. “You got a learning disability or something?”
    “I’m a high-school graduate,” Eddie said, inwardly cursing himself at once for the stupidity of the remark.
    She laughed, not loudly, but the sound had magic—it drowned out everything: the traffic, the bird, the inarticulate warnings in Eddie’s mind. “Me, too,” she said. “So let’s go someplace and hit the books.”
    The words and the woman-voice fit together like the lyric and melody of a song no one can forget. Eddie took a step forward. His internal warnings grew louder and more articulate:What kind of someplace? The backseat of the car? The side of the road? Was she a hooker? Maybe not—he knew there’d been big changes with women, wasn’t it possible this was some kind of casual pickup that went on all the time now? But if so, why him? And if a hooker, that meant money, but how much? He took another step. One more and he’d get a sniff of her—he was already getting the urge to inhale deeply, extravagantly, through his nose—and then the decision would be made.
    Something flashed in Eddie’s peripheral vision. The door of Dunkin’ Donuts opened, catching the light. A cop came out, with coffee in one hand and a sugar donut in the other. He stuck the donut in his mouth, bit into it, saw Eddie. Red jelly spurted into the air. The cop looked hard at Eddie, lowered the donut, took in the car, the woman. Eddie thought: Is it a trap? What kind? Why? He didn’t know. But he’d learned to sense them. He backed away.
    “I don’t think so,” he said.
    “You what?”
    Eddie didn’t answer. He had already turned and started walking toward the bus station. Slow down, he told himself, slow down. He got ready for a cry of “Halt!” or running steps or a bullet in the back. But there was none of that, just the woman saying: