Mona Lisa Overdrive Read Online Free PDF

walked, she searched the mountain jacket’s pockets for a tissue,
     anything, something to wipe the blood from her face.
    When her fingers found the corners of the flat little packet, she knew instantly what
     it was. She halted, shivering. The drug. It wasn’t possible. Yes, it was. But who?
     She turned and stared at the Dornier until it slid away.
    The packet. Enough for a month.
    Coup-poudre
.
    Fear poison, child.

4
SQUAT
    Mona dreamed she was dancing the cage back in some Cleveland juke, naked in a column
     of hot blue light, where the faces thrusting up for her through the veil of smoke
     had blue light snagged in the whites of their eyes. They wore the expression men always
     wore when they watched you dance, staring real hard but locked up inside themselves
     at the same time, so their eyes told you nothing at all and their faces, in spite
     of the sweat, might have been carved from something that only looked like flesh.
    Not that she cared how they looked, when she was in the cage, high and hot and on
     the beat, three songs into the set and the wiz just starting to peak, new strength
     in her legs sending her up on the balls of her feet …
    One of them grabbed her ankle.
    She tried to scream, only it wouldn’t come, not at first, and when it did it was like
     something ripped down inside her, hurt her, and the blue light shredded, but the hand,
     the hand was still there, around her ankle. She came up off the bed like a pop-up
     toy, fighting the dark, clawing hair away from her eyes.
    “Whatsa matter, babe?”
    He put his other hand against her forehead and shoved her back, down into the pillow’s
     hot depression.
    “Dream …” The hand was still there and it made her want to scream. “You got a cigarette,
     Eddy?” The hand went away, click and flare of the lighter, the planes of his face
     jumping out at her as he lit one, handed it to her. She sat up quickly, drew her knees
     up under her chin with the army blanket over them like a tent, because she didn’t
     feel like anybody touching her then at all.
    The scavenged plastic chair’s broken leg made a warning sound as he leaned back and
     lit his own cigarette.
Break
, she thought,
pitch him on his ass so he gets to hit me a few times
. At least it was dark, so she didn’t have to look at the squat. Worst thing was waking
     up with a bad head, too sick to move, when she’d come in crashing and forgotten to
     retape the black plastic, hard sun to show her all the little details and heat the
     air so the flies could get going.
    Nobody ever grabbed her, back in Cleveland; anybody numb enough to reach through that
     field was already too drunk to move, maybe to breathe. The tricks never grabbed her
     either, not unless they’d squared it with Eddy, paid extra, and that was just pretend.
    Whichever way they wanted it, it got to be a kind of ritual, so it seemed to happen
     in a place outside your life. And she’d gotten into watching them, when they lost
     it. That was the interesting part, because they really did lose it, they were totally
     helpless, maybe just for a split second, but it was like they weren’t even there.
    “Eddy, I’m gonna go crazy, I gotta sleep here anymore.”
    He’d hit her before, for less, so she put her face down, against her knees and the
     blanket, and waited.
    “Sure,” he said, “you wanna go back to the catfish farm? Wanna go back to Cleveland?”
    “I just can’t take this anymore.…”
    “Tomorrow.”
    “Tomorrow what?”
    “That soon enough for you? Tomorrow night, private fucking jet? Straight up to New
     York?
Then
you gonna quit giving me this shit?”
    “Please, baby,” and she reached out for him, “we can take the train.…”
    He slapped her hand away. “You got shit for brains.”
    If she complained any more, anything about the squat, anything that implied he wasn’t
     making it, that all his big deals added up to nothing, he’d start, she knew he’d start.
     Like the time she’d