The Barcelona Brothers Read Online Free PDF

is from there. He’s left the barrio, but he knows he has to go back. He looks at his cell phone, then turns it on. His brother’s calls appear on the screen, but the little chirp that means his battery is near death sounds almost at once, and he decides to turn the phone off. He’s sure the battery will have better occasions for chirping later that very day. When he reaches the corner, he stands stillfor a good while. With his mind blank. He’s not carrying the bag with the hammer. Maybe he left it in the bar or threw it away somewhere. He doesn’t remember. It’s not that he expects to get out of the fix he’s in, but it seems he could at least not make the law’s job too easy.
    He’s cold. He touches his lip, which feels strange, as if it were swelling. Then he looks at his fingertips, checking for blood from his mouth. His temples are pounding. Everything’s so confused. Even now, after he’s made his decision and acted upon it. Things are still until they start moving fast, and then they don’t know how to stop. He looks at the corners of the buildings, at the terraces and the cars, but his eyes have degenerated from so much staring at computer screens and squinting at video games. He’s so far gone that the act of shutting and opening his eyes feels to him rather like closing and restarting the same game.
    Actual violence, it turns out, is not only sordid and unaesthetic, it also possesses a tremendous capacity to generate desperation. Your blows don’t land where you want them to. You’re not as strong as you think. It hurts to receive, but it also hurts to give. And the terrible thing is the certainty that it’s all or nothing. There are no second chances. You have to keep it up. There’s nothing behind you. The sad truth is that adrenaline tastes like fear.
    Epi prefers not to think very much about what happened. His obsession is focused on Tiffany. His wish is to see her face, to hear himself speaking, to talk to her and realize that she’s listening attentively to what he has to tell her. Thebuilding he’s in front of has a low windowsill he could sit on. Maybe stopping for a while would help him to think clearly and figure out what he should do next. A taxi’s about to pass him. Nobody’s going to look for you inside a taxi. Epi raises his hand, but the cab doesn’t stop. Then he notices what he looks like. His sweater is stained with blood and his face—surely—with fear. He takes off the sweater, turns it inside out, and puts it back on. Without realizing it, he’s been trembling for who knows how long. His whole body’s beginning to hurt. Especially his back. The son of a bitch got him good with that ladder. He won’t be able to move tomorrow. One of his feet is starting to bother him, too. It’s possible that he broke a toe. A few minutes pass, and then another taxi comes along, this one with its green light turned on. Epi raises his hand; the cab slows down and pulls up to the curb.
    The driver’s a woman. She scrutinizes him at length in her rearview mirror. The cab’s front and back seats are separated by a security panel with a little basket for passing money back and forth. Epi has never been in jail. He imagines that the visiting area must be something like this. The lawyer committed to justice, the devastated girlfriend, her hand trying to touch his hand through the glass as she says,
I’ll wait for you, I’ll be there when you get out, but tell me, you know you can trust me, where did you hide the money?
    “Where shall I take you?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Well, if you don’t know …”
    “I mean I don’t remember the address.”
    “Anyway, I’m turning on the meter.”
    “I’m going to my girlfriend’s. She doesn’t live far from here. I’m late. I’ll tell you where to turn as we go along.”
    The taxi heads for Tiffany’s place. Epi should probably give her a call first. But it’s still very early, and Miss Tiffany Brisette has a hard time waking