Lights Out Read Online Free PDF Page B

“What’s the matter with you? You gay? Jesus H. Christ. A dyslexic fag. I can’t take much more of this. Am I s’posed to kidnap the prick or what?”
    Eddie stepped over a low wall that divided the Dunkin’ Donuts lot from the bus-station lot and risked a glance back. The cop was moving toward a squad car now, still watching Eddie, but he was chewing on the donut again. The woman was in the red convertible. She slammed the door and sped away. Eddie walked into the bus station.
    Inside was an ill-lit waiting room with rows of orange plastic seats, a ticket counter at the far end, a shop in an alcove on one side. Passing the shop, Eddie saw sunglasses in a rotating display case. He went in, spun the case. There were so many lens colors—blue, green, yellow, rose, gray. He found a mirror-lensed pair, and there he was, reflected in miniature. He saw what everyone else must see: the shaven skull, thepale skin, and eyes they probably didn’t like the look of; superficially nice, maybe, the whites clear, the irises light brown and speckled with coppery flecks, so the overall effect was close to bronze; but their expression, no matter how deep Eddie looked, was cold, wary, hostile. The woman must have been a hooker, and a foolhardy one at that.
    “Looking for something?” said a voice behind him.
    Eddie turned. A fat man in a sleeveless T-shirt had come out from behind the cash register. Now he took a step back.
    “Sunglasses,” Eddie said.
    That reassured him. “For on the water, or just swanning around?” he said.
    “For glare.”
    The man pointed a nicotine-tipped finger. “Try those.”
    “Yellow?”
    “That’s amber. Says antiglare right on them.”
    Eddie tried on amber sunglasses. They made everything yellow. “I’ll have to look outside.” He walked out of the shop, to the entrance of the bus station. The man followed, close behind. Eddie looked out. There was less glare, but everything was yellow, including the cop and his squad car, now parked in the bus-station parking lot. Donut consumed, but the cop was still watching him.
    “Well?” the clerk asked, gazing up at his face. Eddie could smell him. “You want them or not?”
    “Okay,” Eddie said.
    They returned to the shop. The clerk punched numbers on the cash register. “Twenty-four ninety-five,” he said.
    That seemed like a lot for sunglasses. Eddie took out the brown envelope, fished through for a ten and a twenty. The money hadn’t changed at all. It’s expensive, outside these walls . But you could buy things that changed the color of the view.
    “I haven’t got all day.”
    Eddie handed over the cash and put on the glasses. The clerk gave him $5.05 and came at him with a pair of scissors. Eddie jumped back.
    “You wanna go around with that tag flappin’ on your nose, fine with me.”
    Eddie let him cut off the tag. He joined the line at the ticket counter. In front of him stood a squat, olive-skinned woman with a baby in her arms and a restless little girl at her side. The little girl wore earrings, a frilly dress, and shiny black dancing shoes. She seemed too young to be turned out like that, but still Eddie couldn’t take his eyes off her. She had skinny arms and legs and big, serious eyes, and she skipped around in circles, singing a Spanish song under her breath. Eddie had forgotten that such creatures lived, and lived on the same planet as the man with the ring in his tongue. He suddenly thought of the beautiful water snakes that saved the mariner’s soul—“O happy living things!”—and understood them a little better. Then the girl saw him watching and buried herself in her mother’s skirt. The mother turned, gave Eddie a hard stare and the girl a smack on the back of her head. Eddie, towering over them, tried to appear harmless.
    “Where to, buddy?”
    Then he was at the counter, facing the ticket agent. The ticket agent was an old man with hairs sticking out of his ears and nose and formless and faded tattoos on