Speak Ill of the Living Read Online Free PDF Page B

marriage.”
    Henry knocked a knuckle on the glass. “World’s best birth control,” he said. “It was a quick courtship. Got married last May, right in this room, on the thirteenth.” He looked sly and smiled. “We’re having a party next month. Are you free that day, little brother?”
    â€œDo you have to call me that?” Eddie snapped. Why did Henry address him like they were so familiar?
Why does that piss me off so much?
“Until I got your letter, I wasn’t even sure that you knew I was born. You’re a stranger, nothing more.”
    Henry’s eyes widened again. He turned the scarred side of his face toward Eddie and broke into a tight-jawed grin that raised another wave of gooseflesh on Eddie’s skin.
    Henry’s hard whisper came from a reddened face: “You
know
me better than you think.” The muscles in his neck tensed. He looked like he was about to crash through the glass. Eddie leaned away from him. Eddie’s hand unconsciously tightened around the phone, as if claiming it as a weapon—closest thing he had to a club—to defend himself.
    This is foolish. He can’t reach me through the glass
.
He can never get out of this prison.
    Eddie willed himself calm. He paused for a deep breath, then said in a breezy voice: “I don’t know much about you. I know you were an athlete before you came here, a good one.”
    Henry’s face instantly relaxed. There was no trace of rage in him. He asked, “Do you know how the universe was made?”
    Another sudden change of direction? “Sorry, I wasn’t around for Genesis.”
    â€œGenesis? So you say God made the world?”
    Eddie shrugged.
    Henry leaned back, looked around the room. He seemed indifferent.
    The sonofabitch is mirroring my emotions!
    Was that a game for Henry? To read what another person was feeling, amplify the emotion and turn it back on them? Was that what thirty years in prison did to a person? Eddie wanted to talk about the note Henry had sent him, about who kidnapped Roger Lime. Henry was acting crazed, but Eddie didn’t believe it. There was something in Henry’s face that revealed a calculating intelligence behind the non-sequiturs and eccentricity. Henry Bourque would come to the point when he was ready.
    Eddie played along. “Where do
you
say the universe came from?”
    â€œThere are scientists who have developed marvelous theories of the origins of the natural world that do not have to include a god,” said Henry.
    â€œThe Big Bang theory?”
    â€œA child’s guess in simpler times, in comparison to the thinking of today—there’s too much luck involved. Did you realize that the ratio of matter and energy in the universe is perfect? Had that ratio settled more than a quadrillionth of a percentage point either way, the universe would be too compressed, or too spread out, for life to begin?”
    â€œI guess we’re lucky.”
    â€œMaybe not. There are other theories.”
    â€œWhat’s your favorite?”
    â€œImagine a mother universe polluted with points of infinite mass and no dimensions,” Henry said. “The unthinkable gravity of these points bend the space around them, until they snap off into another dimension, and create a new daughter universe with unique physical laws. Imagine that happening trillions of times, until, as chance would eventually determine, one of those daughters develops the right ratio of matter and energy for life. It’s called the multi-universe theory. I didn’t think it up, though I wish I had. Isn’t it lovely? A theory of creation that doesn’t rely on luck or on the Almighty?”
    Eddie’s eyes traced the scar on Henry’s face. The edges were jagged, as if the wound had been carved with a dull knife. “That’s a weird concept of the universe,” Eddie said. “It’s weirder than God.”
    Henry smiled.