The Haze Read Online Free PDF Page B

“I didn’t like it, not knowing how things turned out.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œYou get to the end of a story, it’s over, and the characters just keep on living and you don’t know how things are going to turn out for them. Leave you hanging. I didn’t like that.”
    â€œEverything turns out the same way,” he said. “That’s stupid, Javi. End of the story, everybody dies. Isn’t but one outcome and that’s it.”
    â€œI know that. But people in books they’re not the same as real people.”
    â€œYou don’t like living with uncertainty. That what you’re saying?”
    â€œYeah, that’s what I’m saying. I like things to be reliable. But books, the ones they made me read in school, nobody could say for sure what any of it added up to. It was on a test, I usually failed cause whatever I thought, it turned out it wasn’t the right thing. So I quit reading.”
    â€œGrapefruit is what I have for breakfast. Pre-sliced.”
    Javi left.
    He got back to his book. A gangster came into the library one day, real tough guy, smelled like aftershave and gunpowder, walked right over to the librarian and said, “You know how to handle a gun?”
    â€œSure I do. I been shooting since I was knee high to a caterpillar.”
    â€œI’m looking for somebody to do a job for me. It pays five grand.”
    The librarian came out from behind his desk.
    â€œWhy me?”
    â€œCops take one look at you, little runty geriatric, they keep on walking. You’re perfect. It’s like a disguise, the old guy look. You look confused, your eyes are hazy.”
    Later Little Mo met the gangster at his cheap motel on the edge of town. Tiny cabins with a gravel lot out front. The Davy Crockett Inn. A hot sheets joint in Raybun, West Virginia. Little Mo had lost his virginity in the same cabin where he met with the gangster. Jilly Johnson, a little girl, Mo took her to the mountaintop, showed her the sights, a first class orgasm, and she cried afterwards, couldn’t stop crying. From the beauty of it, or the sadness, he was never sure.
    â€œI could use the five G’s.”
    â€œYeah? Glad to hear it. How you feel about shooting a girl? You sexist or anything?”
    â€œFor five thousand I can get over it.”
    â€œShe works in a store downtown, little shop sells books. The girl knows too much. She’s going to testify, send me to jail. I’d do the job myself but they’d see me coming. You, hell no, you could just walk up to her put three in her head, one in her heart. That could be your calling card. Start a new career.”
    He didn’t sleep good that night, worrying about his daughter, what was about to happen to her. She was the target. Working in that store, no protection. He turned and he tossed and in the morning he didn’t have any appetite for his sunnysides and grapefruit.
    â€œYou keep leaving your food, Mr. Connors, we gonna stop feeding you.”
    â€œI need a ride downtown to my daughter’s place of business. She’s in danger. I need to warn her.”
    â€œYour daughter’s outside in the lobby talking to the super, you can warn her in a minute.”
    His daughter came.
    â€œDad, Javier said you wanted to talk to me. You’re very agitated.”
    Little Mo didn’t say anything. He was trying to blink away the haze, get a good look at this girl, see if she seemed familiar.
    â€œDad, I think you’re getting worse. The doctor and I think we should move you upstairs where they can give you better care.”
    â€œUpstairs?”
    â€œThey have more staff up there. They have pretty views, long distance. You can see across the river all the way to the Empire State Building when the sky’s clear.”
    â€œUpstairs is where they send the troublemakers.”
    â€œIt’s just that you’ve been agitated lately, Dad. Throwing things, saying