Right as Rain Read Online Free PDF Page A

haloed in the cold and watched his breath blow out into the night. He had grown up in this city, it was his, and to him it was beautiful.
    Sometime later he crossed the remainder of the bridge and went to the chain—link fence that had been erected in the past year. The fence prevented pedestrians from walking into the area of the train station via the bridge. He glanced around idly and climbed the fence, dropping down over its other side. Then he was in near the small commuter train station, a squat brick structure with boarded windows housing bench seats and a ticket office, and he went down a dark set of stairs beside the station. He entered a fluorescent—lit foot tunnel that ran beneath the Metro and B & O railroad tracks. The tunnel smelled of nicotine, urine, and beer puke, but there was no one in it now, and he went through to the other side, going up another set of concrete steps and finding himself on a walkway on the west side of the tracks.
    He walked along the fence bordering the old Canada Dry bottling plant, turned, stood with his hands buried in his jeans, and watched as a Red Line train approached from the city. His long sight was beginning to go on him, and the lights along Georgia Avenue were blurred, white stars broken by the odd red and green.
    He looked across the tracks at the ticket office as the passing train raised wind and dust. He closed his eyes.
    He thought of his favorite western movie,
Once Upon a Time in the West.
Three gunmen are waiting on the platform of an empty train station as the opening credits roll. It’s a long sequence, made more excruciating by the real—time approach of a train and a sound design nearly comic in its exaggeration. Eventually the train arrives. A character named Harmonica steps off of it and stands before the men who have come to kill him. Their shadows are elongated by the dropping sun. Harmonica and the men have a brief and pointed conversation. The ensuing violent act is swift and final.
    Standing there at night, on the platform of the train station in Silver Spring, he often felt like he was waiting for that train. In many ways, he felt he’d been waiting all his life.
    After a while he went back the way he had come and headed for Rosita’s. He was ready for a beer, and also to talk to Juana. He had been curious about her for some time.
    J UANA Burkett was standing at the service end of the bar, waiting on a marg—rocks—no—salt from Enrique, the tender, when the white man in the black leather jacket came through the door. She watched him walk across the dining room, navigating the tables, a man of medium height with a flat stomach and wavy brown hair nearly touching his shoulders. His face was clean shaven, with only a shadow of beard, and there was a natural swagger to his walk.
    He seated himself at the short, straight bar and did not look at her at first, though she knew that she was the reason he was here. She had met him briefly at his place of employment, a used book and vinyl store on Bonifant, where she had been looking for a copy of
Home Is the Sailor,
and Raphael had told her that he had been asking for her since and that he would be stopping by. On the day that she’d met him she felt she’d seen him before, and the feeling passed through her again. Now he looked around the restaurant, trying to appear casually interested in the decor, and finally his eyes lit on her, where they had been headed all the time, and he lifted his chin and gave her an easy and pleasant smile.
    Enrique placed the margarita on her drink tray, and she dressed it with a lime wheel and a swizzle stick and walked it to her four—top by the front window. She served the marg and the dark beers on her tray and took the food orders from the two couples seated at the table, glancing over toward the bar one time as she wrote. Raphael was standing beside the man in the black leather jacket and the two of them were shaking hands.
    Juana went back to the area of the service