The Silver Bear Read Online Free PDF Page A

smacks of bright purple gum and the smell of grapes left too long on the vine. “So I’m prepared to grant you favors in exchange for a lift.”
    “A lift where?”
    “Wherever it is you’re headed.”
    “What kind of favors?”
    She drops her chin and looks at me from the tops of her eyes like I don’t have the sense God gave me. Just then, the waitress approaches. The girl waits for me to order, and before the waitress can disappear, I find myself asking her if she’s hungry.
    “Fuckin’ starvin’, man.”
    The waitress takes an order for steak and eggs and hashbrowns and bacon if they have any left over from breakfast. Oh, and some orange juice and some milk and that’ll be it. The girl’s eyes are merry now; there is a break in the storm clouds. I don’t normally talk to people, but it’s been an abnormal week and those merry eyes stir something inside me I thought wasn’t there.
    “How’d you get here?”
    “This nut-rubber wanted some company for his ride over to Boston. He wanted me to jerk him along the way.” Hand gestures for emphasis. “I gave him what he asked for and when we pulled over here to get something to eat, he split as soon as I stepped out of the car.” Matter-of-factly, as though she were telling me about her day at school. “Stiffed me, too, the bastard. It’s gettin’ to where there’s not any honest people around.”
    “How old are you?”
    “I lost track.”
    I swear she’s seventeen. “What’s the last age you remember being?”
    “Let’s not talk about me. Let’s talk about—”
    But she’s interrupted by the food. We both eat in silence; I because I enjoy it, she because she can’t get the breakfast into her mouth fast enough. The food is flying up to her face like a power shovel at full steam, and she is as unembarrassed as a hog at a trough. She devours all of hers, and when I proffer half of my plate, she attacks it.
    After I’ve left money for the tab, she asks, “So how about that ride?”
    “What do you think?”
    Smiling now with those beautiful ivory teeth, she puts one finger in her mouth. “I think I’ve got a pretty good shot at taggin’ along with you.”
     
     
    SHE’S asleep in the passenger seat, and I am pissed. Pissed I let my guard down, pissed I’ve committed a cardinal sin, pissed I’ve ignored every professional instinct in my ken to allow her to share this car with me. I can still kill her, can still pull the car down one of these farm-to-market roads, roll the tires against some deserted brush, and pop, pop, dump the body where it won’t be found for weeks. She won’t be missed, that’s certain. Except, goddammit, people saw us at the diner, the waitress, the old man in coveralls at the counter, the couple in the booth at the far end of the joint. They saw her lock in on me, and they saw us leave together, and they saw us get into my beige sedan. People noticed. They noticed, goddammit. What is happening to me?
    Bad luck. The name at the top of the page was bad luck, and now picking up this girl-whore is as black bad as it can get. My stomach is queasy with the blackness.
    I must be slipping.
    “So, where are we headed?” She puts her bare feet up on the dashboard in front of her and blinks groggily.
    “Philadelphia.”
    “Yeah? Good. That’s where I came from.”
    “Originally?”
    “Naah,” she snorts, finding the question funny. “Originally I’m from a little hovel outside of Pittsburgh that you’ve never heard of. Recently, I’m from Philly.”
    “That’s where you . . . work?”
    She snorts again, not at all self-conscious about the way it makes her sound like a sow. “Yeah, work. Working girl.” She pauses thoughtfully, and then, as though she’s struggling with the weight of her question, “What do you think about that?”
    “About what you do?”
    “Yeah. I’m curious. You seem like a normal dude.
    What’s a normal dude think about a working girl?”
    “I think it can’t be too good of a way