The 10 P.M. Question Read Online Free PDF Page B

masks. Rice. Panadol, plastic gloves, more baked beans, medications —”
    “We’ll talk to Uncle G,” said Ma.
    Not for the first time Frankie wondered what the ghostly woman was waiting for. Or whom.
    “Do you think it will happen soon?” said Frankie. “Bird flu?”
    “Probably not,” said Ma. “Good to be prepared, though.”
    The bedroom door in the painting was slightly ajar; a soft light showed in the adjoining room. Sometimes Frankie thought he could detect a shadow in the light. Maybe it was the woman’s husband, or her child. Or her maid. Or a highwayman. But probably highwaymen didn’t come into houses; probably they stuck to the highways.
    “ ’
Night, then,” said Frankie. “You really think it won’t happen soon?” he said from the doorway.
    “I really think it won’t happen soon,” said Ma. She glanced at the clock on the bedside table. “Ten-oh-two p.m. You’re so
punctual,
Frankie.”
    “Ha, ha,” said Frankie.
    He closed the door quietly.

Frankie and Gigs were climbing the Zig Zag, the eternal afternoon slog. It was hot. Crushingly hot, said Gigs. Punishingly hot, said Frankie. Mercilessly hot, said Gigs. Barbarously hot, said Frankie. Gigs matched him step for slow step around the fourth corner — thinking feverishly, Frankie could tell.
    Even the ferns looked hot, Frankie thought. Kind of limp and exhausted. His feet were damp and gritty, his pack impossibly heavy.
    “
Malignantly
hot,” said Gigs, punching the air.
    “You win,” said Frankie, glad to give up. It was far too hot for adverbs.
    “Shall we do Upham’s?” said Gigs. Upham’s was the local swimming pool — the Charles Upham Memorial Baths, to be exact. Frankie and Gigs went there as often as possible in the summer. They didn’t actually swim much; they just spear-dived off the deep end for white stones, and ducked each other a lot.
    When they were much younger, Louie had taught them to cannonball, but the pool attendants had threatened Louie with a life-ban for bad role-modeling and they’d had to stop. Upham’s was the best way Frankie knew for cooling off, despite Louie’s recent assurance that riding a motorbike down Tram Road, naked except for soaking wet jeans, was better still.
    But Upham’s would be unbearably crowded today, Frankie thought. And last Saturday when they’d been there, he’d had his annual unsavory collision with a Band-Aid. There was nothing more revolting in Frankie’s view than freestyling your way, innocent and blissful, into the path of a used Band-Aid. In Frankie’s private hierarchy of squeamish experiences, the casual caress of a stained Band-Aid was right up there with accidentally catching sight of writhing maggots in a forgotten rubbish bag. He’d had to get out of the pool immediately last Saturday and lie on his towel in the sun to recover.
    And it was double bad luck having a Band-Aid collision, Frankie found. It always set him off obsessing about all the other unpalatable things that could be floating one’s way in the pool: scabs, boogers, pubic hair, earwax, horrible egg-whitish strings of snot . . .
    Uncle George said it was just as well Frankie hadn’t been around in the old pea-soup days, before swimming pool filtration. Upham’s had been called The Lido then and it had been so full of crap, it was impossible to see the bottom. Not seeing the bottom wasn’t really a problem, though, Uncle George said breezily; he didn’t remember minding in the least. They’d all caroused quite happily, he said, no problem, until the day someone had felt that body on the bottom. . . .
    Frankie shuddered. He hated that story. The body had been a child’s. That child’s body had given him bad thoughts for weeks. He’d had to creep down the hall night after night and stand by Ma’s side of the bed, mentally reciting cricket test statistics, just to calm down. Mostly now he managed not to think about the body, but Band-Aids could wreck things in a moment.
    On the other