Mai at the Predators' Ball Read Online Free PDF

sun sparkling on the water, Ari wanted to say you know I have sculptor friends in New York and my entire professional life, Lou you know that, and what wouldn’t he have said just to divert her vindictive anger, would he, supposedly a free man, forever be condemned to confronting his daughter and her mother, you’ll see when it comes time for you to hang around boys, you’ll see how men are and one day you’ll understand, oh how Lou longed to tear out Rosie’s hair, every bit of it, one by one from this obedient child’s head who still went to bed at eight every evening, same time as her little brother, Lou’s rage would not leave a single strand in place, and Ari, the man who no longer spoke true, no longer her friend, whose dreamy faraway look now shamefully, oh so shamefully, looked at her unseeing while seemingly polishing the mahogany flanks of his boat, The Boat , hers and his, distracted and unfaithful father that he was, she thought of bringing all those other little girls here just so she could pull their hair out like that Rosie’s, this was how much her father’s wandering eye tore into her, the parade of young women, mistresses, that didn’t matter, but for him to be in love with a real person, no that was not going to happen thought Lou, he already had a home and a wife, Ingrid, and a daughter, Marie-Louise — Lou herself — and there were to be no additions to that, no more of those usurping outsiders to take her father and all that from her, as some had already done right beneath her unsuspecting eye, and then here was Rosie looking in stunned admiration at her and the other gifted kids with the fastest computers, and why don’t we have those in our school, I mean it hasn’t even been fixed up and the walls are cracked, asked Rosie, because they’re just for us and no one else was Lou’s answer, because the really cool computers are for the important people and you’re not one of those, and we’re the ones education is meant for, oh Lou knew what she said always bordered on insult, and she really had to nail this Rosie, like everyone who set foot on the boat, and she’d face down her father and bait the trap by offering them fries and hot dogs, then she could pull their hair and make them scream so loud she couldn’t describe the all-powerful feeling it gave her over all these tin-pot despots, when the one she really wanted to harm by her words and actions was her father; unfortunately he had the strength to resist and she could never defeat him, just look at those arms, that frame, she, she could do nothing about his loving another, the immunity she thought he had to love, this old grownup, and Robbie, tired of Reverend Stone’s oratorical flights, walked back to the Porte du Baiser Saloon with Petites Cendres, thinking how much fun life with Fatalité had been, not like this weepy, prayer-laden evening they’d just had imposed on them with orchids and rose petals cast onto the sea, no, life with Fatalité was quite simply a farce, a comedy, and nothing sinister about it either, not like tonight’s performance all wrapped up in prayers, masquerading in sermon, merely Fatalité in all her reality, Robbie’s friend, laughing hysterically together, the two of them opening every door in the saloon so passersby and tourists could just drop in and sing and dance with them that night, join in their ramblings and trances, kiss me, love me , a very corpulent woman was zeroing straight in on them, oh my darlings listen to the sound of my voice, let me writhe like a snake with you all onstage, so close to the stars and in the divine hysteria of tonight, and listen to this deep voice of mine from deep in my heavy guts, isn’t it wonderfully painful, oh God my husband’s watching from across the street, I do hope he doesn’t come and stop me singing with you my sweet scatterbrains and nutbars, boy this bra is killing me, what a straitjacket for a woman to haul around, hell, just let it fall where