Tomato Red Read Online Free PDF

face to mine, put her eyes six inches from mine, and stared. She was drilling something potent into me. She drilled it in deep.
    “I hope this is for the best.” She put the blade to the strap across my chest and began to saw. Her eyes held steady and drilled past my crust to where I get gooey. “It seems I’m always doin’ the noble thing,” she said softly, “then regrettin’ it.”

3
    Double Everything
    CHANCES SUCH AS this come few and apart.
    Jamalee and Jason introduced me to a bathroom upstairs that had a vast and nifty tub, with sort of a bench, even, underwater. You could stretch out, float, flop around, or sit on that slick bench in the hot bubble bath and have a deep think. I sank in among the steam and bubbles and lathered and scrubbed and dunked. When I climbed out there was this silk, or something of the silk type, robe for me to wear. The robe was the blue of a peacock fan. I found a blade, shaved clean at the sink. Six or eight flavors of cologne were on a stand there, and I splashed on one I never heard of, Vetiver, and the smell was fancy and wonderful.
    This whole sequence was like a crazy dream you seem to understand.
    I wore only that robe and my new smell back downstairs. The stairs went this way, then that way, then the other way again, and it amounted to a short dizzy hike. The kids didn’t have things too bright on the first floor. They seemed to enjoy candles but not lightbulb light. Three candles sat on a table and burned and cast a wavy sort of spiritual light that belonged at a séance or in a van when you’re undergoing sex.
    I came into the dim light, and shadows had got up and were bucking and winging real festive across the walls. The pair of my new buddies sat at a long thick table with probably crystal wine goblets set out. The wine looked black. I noted three goblets.

    She said the first words.
    “We’d like to hire you.”
    “Oh, now, I’ve got a job.” There was a shovel with my name on it in the burn room at the dog-food factory, but my name was only on a piece of gray tape that had already come a little loose at the edges. I’d made several sizable promises to get that shovel job. My work history was awful spotty, see, even with all the shit I invented to shove into the blank periods. “A pretty good one, too.”
    “That’s nice,” she said. “It’s not what I want to hear, but it’s nice for you. This job, though. Do you work on Mondays?”
    “Well, sure. Through Fridays.”
    “Oops,” went Jason.
    “Did you call in this morning, say you were sick?”
    I reacted with a stare at her.
    “Today’s Sun—”
    “Huh-uh, Sammy,” she said. Her tomato head swayed about. “Sorry about this, but it is now approaching a fashionably late dinner hour on Monday evening. You overslept by half a day, I’m afraid.”
    I took a seat at the table. I put my fingers to my ears and yanked and yanked until my eyes pooled and my brain snapped to attention. The foreman had barely hired me in the first place.
    “I’m starvin’,” I said.
    I stood away from the table, shuffled barefoot to the kitchen. Their footsteps followed close behind me. I got back there where all the glass and the great view were, and there was nothin’ but dark caused by heavy clouds and whipping rain all across the landscape. Big plump trees were waddling in place. I stood silent, quite a long minute or two, staring out, listening to the mud grow.

    “Let’s microwave a dinner for Sammy,” Jason said lightly. “Him needs a hot meal.”
    I couldn’t bother to watch.
    That bank vault broke open with a suck noise, and he shoved around in the frozen food section, then shut the door.
    “How does clam linguini sound?”
    I spun around then, and went on and gave in, gave in all the way to who I was.
    “Now I always have loved that dish,” I said, hoping I actually would, “whenever it’s been served.”
     
    WE GOT ALONG real quick.
    The two of them held candles and showed me about the mansion,