The Skin Gods Read Online Free PDF Page A

route.
     
     
Teaching, she thought as she found a seat near the front. Maybe someday. She had always been patient with people, and she had to admit she got a good feeling when she was able to impart wisdom to others. Her father, of course wanted her to be president of the United States. Or at least attorney general.
     
     
A few moments later, the man who would be her student got up from the bus stop bench, stretched. He tossed the book into a trash can.
     
     
It was a scorcher of a day. He slipped into his car, glanced at the LCD screen of his camera phone. He had gotten a good image. She was beautiful.
     
     
He started the car, carefully pulled out into traffic, and followed the bus down Walnut Street.
     
     
     
    5
THE APARTMENT WAS QUIET WHEN BYRNE RETURNED. WHAT else would it be? Two hot rooms over a former print shop on Second Street, nearly Spartan in furnishings: a worn love seat and distressed mahogany coffee table, a television, a boom box, and a stack of blues CDs. In the bedroom, a queen-size bed and a small, thrift-store nightstand.
     
     
Byrne flipped on the window air conditioner, made his way to the bathroom, split a Vicodin in half, swallowed it. He splashed cool water on his face and neck. He left the medicine cabinet open. He told himself it was to avoid splashing water on it, thereby avoiding the necessity to wipe it down, but the real reason was that he wanted to avoid seeing himself in the mirror. How long had he been doing that, he wondered?
     
     
When he returned to the living room he slipped a Robert Johnson disc into the boom box. He was in the mood for “Stones in My Passway.”
     
     
After the divorce, he had come back to the old neighborhood: the Queen Village section of South Philadelphia. His father had been a longshoreman, a Mummer of citywide fame. Like his father and uncles, Kevin Byrne was, and would always remain, a Two-Streeter at heart. And although it took a while to get back into the rhythms of the neighborhood, the older residents wasted no time in making him feel at home with the three standard South Philly questions:
     
     
Where you from?
     
     
Did you buy or rent?
     
     
Do you have any children?
     
     
He had thought, briefly, of plunking down a chunk for one of the recently rehabbed homes at Jefferson Square, a newly gentrified area nearby, but he wasn’t sure that his heart, unlike his mind, was still in Philadelphia. For the first time in his life, he was a man untethered. He had a few dollars put away— over and above Colleen’s college fund— and he could go and do whatever he pleased.
     
     
But could he leave the force? Could he turn in his service weapon and badge, turn in his papers, take his retirement ID, and simply walk away?
     
     
He honestly did not know.
     
     
He sat on the love seat, ran through the cable channels. He thought about pouring himself a tumblerful of bourbon and just riding the bottle until nightfall. No. He wasn’t a very good drunk these days. These days, he was one of those morbid, ugly drunks you see with four empty stools on either side of him in a crowded tavern.
     
     
His cell phone beeped. He pulled it out of his pocket, stared at it. It was a new camera phone that Colleen had gotten him for his birthday, and he wasn’t quite familiar with all the settings yet. He saw the flashing icon and realized that a text message had come in. He had just gotten a handle on sign language, now there was a whole new vernacular to learn. He looked at the LCD screen. It was a text message from Colleen. Text messaging was the hottest thing among teenagers these days, but especially for deaf teenagers.
     
     
This was an easy one. It read:
     
     
    TY 4 LUNCH :)
     
Byrne smiled. Thank You For Lunch. He was the luckiest man in the world. He typed:
     
     
    YW LUL
     
The message meant: You’re Welcome Love You Lots. Colleen messaged back:
     
     
    LUL 2
     
Then, as always, she signed off by typing:
     
     
    CBOAO
     
The