The Cormorant Read Online Free PDF

we hug?”
    Miriam blinks. “No. No, we cannot.”
    “Girl, don’t be bitter.”
    “Might as well tell the sun not to shine, Taevon.”
     
     

INTERLUDE
    ONE YEAR AGO
    She’s been out all night and now it’s morning and all she can do is let the angels of steam rising from her diner coffee wreathe her face, performing their divine task of scaring away this demonic hangover.
    So far, they’re failing. Fucking angels.
    At least Miriam has enough money for breakfast. And maybe lunch. November is witch-tits cold but warmer than it should be, and so last night on South Street she was able to stand there and peddle her wares like a good little working girl. Not that kind of working girl.
    Shaking her psychic moneymaker.
    This is how it works:
    Sun starts to dip around five in the afternoon. The tourist crowd thins as the bar crowd and folks going to see a show at the TLA start pouring in. Miriam, she stands there on a street corner – the smells of cheesesteaks, cigarettes, and anger washing over her.
    While standing, she holds up a sign: WILL PSYCHIC FOR FOOD.
    Ten bucks gets someone a vision.
    She tells them how they’re going to die.
    And she lies about it, most of the time. Oh, you’re going to die in a fiery jet-ski accident. Helicopter crash skiing K-12, dude. Eaten by a bear in your living room – I know, right? So crazy! Ebola. Monkey flu. Squirrel pox. You die while base-jumping at the same time you’re fucking a Ukrainian super-model, good for you, high five, up top.
    Very rarely does she tell them the truth.
    You die alone in bed in thirty years. You burn in a car crash on your way to a job you hate. You choke on a greasy wad of cold cheesesteak.
    You die poorly because we all die poorly.
    The lie is part of the job.
    She gives good story.
    They give her ten bucks.
    Most people don’t want to know how they’re going to die.
    Most people want to know how they’re going to live.
    They don’t realize how intimately those things are connected.
    She tries to sexy herself up – torn T-shirt, knife-slashed jeans, a push-up bra (which for her is like trying to pinch and lift a couple of mosquito bites, but you work with what you have, damnit).
    It’s hard to be sexy in the wintertime.
    Well. Fuck ’em. Today, she gets breakfast from it. And lunch. And maybe tomorrow night she’ll be able to afford another motel room instead of crashing under bridges, on park benches, in Hobo King’s car. (Hobo King knows all the tricks. “Don’t fog up the windows,” he says, “because that’s how cops know someone’s sleeping in there.” Hobo King’s name is actually Dave and he used to be a cab driver.)
    The waitress comes, drops down a plate called the Working Man’s Special: sausage, bacon, pancakes, eggs, hash browns, toast. All for seven bucks. Breakfast: the cheapest and easiest way to eat a gut-load of food.
    And goddamn if Miriam doesn’t love breakfast. She would marry it if she could. Stick a ring on one of the sausage links – a terrible idea, really, because before she knew it, she’d eat the sausage link and the ring with it and that probably wouldn’t feel great coming out the other end.
    Rings. Engagement rings.
    She makes a mental note: Don’t forget about that guy from the bus .
    Andrew, that was his name. Still almost a year away. He was kind of a prick. But it’s an experiment, she tells herself. Another experiment. She warned him. And in a year she’ll see if he heeds her warning.
    For now she sits and doesn’t eat her food so much as maul it. Fingers greasy from sausage. Bacon in her teeth. Syrup on her chin. The waitress comes and gawks for a moment, and Miriam thinks: I remember you, Susie Q. You’re the one who gets breast cancer in ten years, dies in twenty .
    Cancer, cancer, cancer, so often cancer.
    Miriam dives back into her food with all the gusto of a starving wolverine. Suddenly, here’s the waitress again–
    She looks up. Not the waitress.
    Three dudes. Boys,