Sole Survivor Read Online Free PDF Page A

mist.
        “Look at me,” Joe said.
        Distracted by the cockroach races, the boy said, “Huh?”
        “ Look at me .”
        Surprised by the quiet fury in Joe's voice, the kid briefly met his gaze. Then those troubling eyes, the colour of contusions, refocused on the twenty-dollar bill.
        “The guy you saw was wearing a red Hawaiian shirt?” Joe asked.
        “Other colours in it, but mostly red and orange, yeah.”
        “What pants was he wearing?”
        “Pants?”
        “To keep you honest, I didn't tell you what else he was wearing. So if you saw him, now you tell me.”
        “Hey, man, I don't know. Was he wearing shorts or trunks or pants-how am I supposed to know?”
        “You tell me.”
        “White? Tan? I'm not sure. Didn't know I was supposed to do a damn fashion report. He was just standing there, you know, looking out of place, holding his shoes in one hand, socks rolled up in them.”
        It was the same man whom Joe had seen with the walkie-talkie near the lifeguard station.
        From the gamblers came noisy encouragements to the cockroach, laughter, curses, shouted offers of odds, the making of bets. They were so loud now that their voices echoed harshly off the concrete-block walls and seemed to reverberate in the mirrors with such force that Joe half expected those silvery surfaces to disintegrate.
        “Was he actually watching the Koreans play chess or pretending?” Joe asked.
        “He was watching this place and talking to the cream pies.”
        “Cream pies?”
        “Couple of stone-gorgeous bitches in thong bikinis. Man, you should see the redhead bitch in the green thong. On a scale of one to ten, she's a twelve. Bring you all the way to attention, man.”
        “He was coming on to them?”
        “Don't know what he thinks he's doing,” said the kid. “Loser like him, neither of those bitches will give him a shot.”
        “Don't call them bitches,” Joe said.
        “What?”
        “They're women.”
        In the kid's angry eyes, something flickered like visions of switchblades. “Hey, who the hell are you-the Pope?”
        The acidic yellow air seemed to thicken, and Joe imagined that he could feel it eating away his skin.
        The swirling sound of flushing toilets inspired a spiralling sensation in his stomach. He struggled to repress sudden nausea.
        To the boy, he said, “Describe the women.”
        With more challenge in his stare than ever, the kid said, “Totally stacked. Especially the redhead. But the brunette is just about as nice. I'd crawl on broken glass to get a whack at her, even if she is deaf.”
        “Deaf?”
        “Must be deaf or something,” said the boy. “She was putting a hearing aid kind of thing in her ear, taking it out and putting it in like she couldn't get it to fit right. Real sweet-looking bitch.”
        Even though he was six inches taller and forty pounds heavier than the boy, Joe wanted to seize the kid by the throat and choke him. Choke him until he promised never to use that word again without thinking. Until he understood how hateful it was and how it soiled him when he used it as casually as a conjunction.
        Joe was frightened by the barely throttled violence of his reaction: teeth clenched, arteries throbbing in neck and temples, field of vision abruptly constricted by a blood-dark pressure at the periphery. His nausea grew worse, and he took a deep breath, another, calming himself.
        Evidently, the boy saw something in Joe's eyes that gave him pause. He became less confrontational, turning his gaze once more to the shouting gamblers. “Give me the twenty. I earned it.”
        Joe didn't relinquish the bill. “Where's your dad?”
        “Say what?”
        “Where's your mother?”
        “What's it to you?”
        “Where are they?”
        “They got their own lives.”
        Joe's anger sagged into