Pariah Read Online Free PDF Page B

but he kept his shorts and T-shirt on.
Let the others sashay around in the raw
.
    “Can I get you anything?” he asked, attempting to stay grounded in the now.
    “Huh? Oh, no, no. Just stay with me.”
    “Okay, as long as you need.”
    “No, I mean
stay
with me. Stay in the apartment. Move in with me.”
    Alan looked at her face, trying to glean how serious she was.
Serious as a heart attack,
as the old axiom went. Once upon a time that would have been the answer to his prayers, but now?
    “Move in?”
    “Move in. I don’t want to be alone, especially with those two Neanderthals next door. Listen, I loved Mike, Mike loved me, but these, I dunno, these are savage times. I can’t think about what’s prim and proper and what will the neighbors say? ‘
Look, that whore’s shacking up with someone new already
.’ Who would think that, except those creeps across the hall? Can you imagine what my life will be like if they think I’m—Christ, I can’t even
say
it.
Available
? Oh, Jesus.
Fuck that
. Mourning and starving are all most of us do, anyway. It’s not like you have to move your shit up here, but stay with me. Sleep in the same room. We don’t have to even sleep in the same bed if you’re not comfortable with that. There’s a foldout couch in the living room, but . . .”
    Ellen rambled on, the stream of words blurring. Alan became aware that she was gripping his wrist, hard, her thin fingers clenched together like a vice. They went all the way around his wrist now. That was disturbing.
Alan Zotz and Ellen Swenson
, he mused. Once upon a time he might have wanted to carve that on a tree, with a big “4E” under it. But what could he say? This was a cocktail ofunmitigated grief and panic and adrenaline. When she calmed down she’d probably want him to move back out. This was temporary. Life was temporary. They’d all starve to death pretty soon, anyway.
    Might as well go out one of the good guys.

4

    Karl knocked on the door to the roof, not wanting to intrude on Dabney—at least not without Dabney’s concrete approval. After a few more tentative taps, Dabney called out a brusque, “Whattaya want?”
    “It’s me, Karl. Permission to come above?”
    Dabney half scowled and half chuckled at Karl’s unfailing dorkiness. He appreciated Karl’s respect for his personal space, but this was the roof for Christ’s sake. He didn’t own it. If Karl wanted to come up—if
anyone
wanted to—who was Dabney to say no? Though he seldom used it for shelter, Dabney had set up a shabby lean-to of corrugated aluminum and loose brick. When it rained he’d sleep under it, allowing the buckshot-on-metal clatter to lull him to sleep. It had been weeks since it rained last. Nonetheless, strewn about the roof were various containers for collecting water: garbage cans, buckets, plastic drawers, and file boxes. And a few planters with failed attempts at vegetable farming, all dead before they yielded anything edible.
    Karl stepped out onto the blindingly bright tar paper; the sun was blazing full tilt to the east. He wished he’d brought sunglasses and sandals but didn’t want to go back down just to come back up. Instead he squinted and winced, scorching his eyes and toasting his feet. Karl nodded at Dabney, who returned the acknowledgment before resuming his post on the lip on the roof, belly down on a mottled canvas tarp, head hung over the edge. Beside him was a pile of chunks of brick culled from the neighboring buildings, the roofs of which were all adjoined, separated by low walls which Dabney periodically demolished and raided for recreational target practice. The only constructive use the residents of 1620 had found for masonry—part of a renovation project that never got past the supply stage—was walling up the interior front entrance with cinder blocks, fortifying what the harried contingent of National Guardsmen had hastily thrown up to bar entry to their building. Up and down the block, doorways