Manifesto for the Dead Read Online Free PDF

and dark were all mixed together.
    She pushed his hand away.
    â€œYour sister ran into that woman in Lincoln.”
    â€œWhat woman?”
    â€œLucille Jones. It seems she’s on her way out here.”
    â€œTo Los Angeles?”
    â€œConvention business of some sort, she and her husband. They’re staying at the Château, but Lucille, she’s going to be there a few days, alone, before her husband comes out. At least that’s the news from Franny.”
    He felt Alberta studying him, seeing how he would take this. If there might be something in his face to give him away. She had her suspicions.
    â€œLucille’s husband, he’s a big success,” she said.
    â€œWhat’s he do?”
    â€œA doctor of dentistry, you know that.”
    â€œMakes plenty of money, I bet.”
    â€œA fortune,” she said.
    â€œGives half to charity, the other half to the church, and still has enough left over to live like a prince.”
    â€œYou’re just jealous.”
    â€œNo, it’s the other way around,” said Thompson.
    â€œWhat do I have to be jealous of?”
    â€œLussie married so well, and you, on the other hand …” He paused, feeling the knife in his heart, the pain a little more sharp, a little more sweet, because he had placed it there himself. He waited to see if she would pull the dagger out.
    â€œOh, I don’t know about that,” she said. “My husband—he’s the best known writer in Los Angeles. Famous as the dirt. Desert Sands, that’s his name. Mister Goddamn Desert Sands.”
    Thompson had had enough. He stomped out, taking the sweater with him, and also his flask of bourbon.
    Outside, Thompson thought about the girl on Whitley Terrace, in the back of the Cadillac. He started to walk up the hill, feeling the same compulsion he’d felt earlier, but after a few steps he changed his mind. It would not be wise to go up there, and anyway gravity pulled a person down, not up. So he plummeted towards the Strip instead, to his little room and the typewriter on the table at the window. He didn’t start to work, not right away. He wondered some more about the girl, and he drank. He drank until a white light filled his head. It was the black-out light, the light of nothingness. As it grew brighter, he remembered the sweater. He looked everywhere. On the closet floor, under the bed, in his dresser drawers. Maybe I stashed it on the hill, he thought. Or maybe … maybe something else … there is no sweater, no girl. I’m finally losing it, and she is just a figment of my imagination, another hieroglyphic in a line of hieroglyphics on the white and shimmering page.

EIGHT
    It was a trap. The woman who picked me off the road, her name was Belle Lanier. She took me home and put me up in the spare bedroom, in her Daddy’s house.
    I took off my clothes and lay naked in the bed. I’d met her Daddy at dinner, and her little sister. The sister was a bit like Belle, only more wholesome, with big glasses, and a toothy smile. I touched myself, imagining both sisters at once. How, if I played things right, I could be their Daddy’s right-hand man someday.
    A plan was forming in my head.
    Forget it boy, you ain’t nothing but a small time con.
    It was the voice again. Pops. The prison psychologist had told me not to mind him anymore. Said Pops was not real, no, only a voice in my head that I’d made up when I was a kid because I didn’t have any dad of my own. Just all those men my mother used to bring around.
    There was a knock on the door. Belle strolled in and sat on the bed. She wore a silk shift and a flower in her hair.
    â€œMy daddy’s a rich man,” she said.
    Then she straddled my leg, so the warm ugly part of her was against my knees. She put her hand on me down low, pressing her lips over mine. I struggled against her a little bit, but she wouldn’t let me go. I thought of her sister,