Songs of the Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

me both, sister.”
    â€œWho do you owe?”
    â€œMy dealer. You’ve got Viktor, I’ve got heroin.”
    Nika looks at her for a long moment, then to the ground.
    Kristine continues, “At least the heroin makes me feel good.”
    â€œAnd it won’t kill you if you run away.”
    Kristine laughs. “Oh, it will kill me all right if I try to leave. I’ve done that a couple of times, and it came right after me to bring me back.”
    Nika is silent.
    Kristine says, “I don’t know how you do all of this sober.”
    â€œThe tricks?”
    â€œAll of it. Look around. Do you ever actually look at the people? Not just the johns. All of them. They’re as dead as we are. Only we’ve got the sense to know it. And the cars. Do you ever notice the air? It tastes like shit. No, it doesn’t. I grew up on a farm, and this smells far worse than shit.”
    â€œI grew up. . . .” Nika trails off.
    Kristine doesn’t look at her directly. She wants to know more about her friend, but knows if she says the wrong thing she’ll scare her away. The silence stretches longer.
    Finally Nika says, “In the country.”
    More silence. Kristine wants to ask where, what it was like, who was her family, but doesn’t know where to start. So she does what she knows is best. She lets the other be.
    Nika says simply, “I’m never going home.”
    Kristine knows better than to disagree directly. She says, “It has happened before. Some women have made it.” A pause before she continues, “Do you want to go home?”
    â€œMore than. . . .”
    A car slows, pulls up to the curb. It’s one of Kristine’s semi-regulars. Kristine says to Nika, “Fuck. I’m sorry. Maybe later?”
    The man opens the passenger window, leans across, says, “Hey, Kristine, who’s your pretty friend?”
    Kristine senses money slipping away, and wouldn’t mind if it were slipping to Nika. She would mind it going to Viktor.
    Nika comes over to the car. The man looks from her face to her breasts and back to her face. He does the same to Kristine, then says, “I’d forgotten how much your shoulders turn me on. Same price? Get in.”
    The street is hot, and empty. No people, no cars. Nika paces back and forth, facing then going with the nonexistent traffic. She doesn’t see the truck pull up next to her, and jumps a little when she hears it close by. She turns, looks at the man inside. His passenger window is already down.
    She walks to his vehicle.
    He says, “Would you like to party?”
    â€œWhat do you have in mind?”
    â€œDepends on the price.”
    â€œFirst,” she says, “you’ve got to show me something I don’t have.”
    The man has done this before, knows the game. Cops can’t expose themselves. He unzips his pants, pulls out a nondescript penis.
    She licks her lips. “Very nice,” she says. Make the sale , she thinks.
    â€œWell?”
    â€œMakes me want to drop my price. For you I’ll do a blow for twenty-five, a lay for fifty, half and half for sixty, and for a hundred you get me for an hour.”
    â€œThat’s a discount?”
    â€œThat’s my discount.” She pushes back from the truck.
    â€œNo, wait, here.” He pulls a couple of fifty dollar bills from his shirt pocket.
    She puts the money in the front left pocket of her tight shorts, pulls the pendant from her neck, puts that in the other pocket, and gets in.
    The man says, “Buckle up. I don’t want to get a ticket.”
    She does. He begins to drive. They make small talk. He asks her name. She tells him. She asks his name, and he gives her one she knows is false. He asks her other questions and she lies, too. He doesn’t pull into an alley like she was expecting, but drives around, as though uncertain what he wants to do next.
    Finally she says, “You’ll need to pull