Where the Devil Can't Go Read Online Free PDF

the retreating figure, who was shouting something about the Human Rights Act, and then up at Janusz.
    “What’s with that guy?” she asked.
    “I don’t know,” he said, with a shrug. “London is full of crazy people.”
    She shot him a suspicious look: “You haven’t been telling the customers stories again?” He shook his head, avoiding her eyes, but had to suck in his cheeks to keep from grinning.
    Kasia pulled the robe tighter around her – it was cold – and reached into the pocket for cigarettes. “You think you’re so funny, Janusz,” she said. “But if the boss finds out he’ll kick your dupa .” She raised her chin in the direction of the smoke alarm, which had now settled to a strident beeping: “And I suppose that’s nothing to do with you either?”
    The unchivalrous daylight added ten years or more to her face, he thought, but she could still pass for thirty-five, maybe even thirty, no problem.
    “I got bored,” he said.
    She widened her eyes in mock reproach. “Oh, a nice compliment. You don’t like my show?”
    “Nice body. Piekne ,” he said. “But then I knew that already,” levelling his amused gaze at her. She held the look, trying to look stern, but one side of her mouth lifted, despite herself: the crooked smile that filled his daydreams.
    She bent her dark blonde head to his lighter, steadying his hand a beat longer than she needed to, making his stomach trip. It was funny, but he could never quite connect the woman in front of him with the one he’d seen pole-dancing minutes earlier. That girl was hot stuff, no question, but she didn’t make his insides polka like Kasia did. His jaw tensed as he noticed the yellow tidemark of an old bruise along her cheekbone that her make-up couldn’t quite conceal.
    “Listen, Kasia. I paid that chuj Steve a visit this morning.”
    Kasia’s hand jumped to her face.
    “ Kurwa! ” the curse slipped out before her lips could catch it. “...and?”
    He looked amused: she hardly ever swore, and was probably making a mental note to take her misdemeanour to confession.
    “I made the case to him that a man does not strike a woman, not even his own wife,” the words were old-fashioned and his deep voice was reasonable – but his eyes had suddenly gone cold.
    She pulled the lapels of her gown closer. “What did he say?”
    “My impression was I left him a reformed character,” he said. “But he knows that I am happy to continue our...discussions if necessary.”
    She said nothing, but reached out and briefly touched her cold hands to the sides of his face.
    He pulled back a fraction: he didn’t know why, but the gesture made him angrier than her pig of a husband and his wife-beating habits. Why did a woman like her stay with such a man? Kasia came from a good family and was as smart as a fox – she had a degree from the Film School where Polanski and Kieslowski had studied, for Christ’s sake! But he’d already heard her answer to that: ‘ love can die but marriage lives forever ’. And this sleazy job of hers was the couple’s only income. Half a million Poles managed to carve a living here, but born and bred Londoner Steve could never find work. It was too easy to get by on benefit in this country, he reflected, not for the first time.
    No point telling her to leave him, anyway. Like all Polish women she was obstinate as hell, and would tell him to go fuck himself. To cover his expression he ground his cigar stub underfoot.
    As Kasia turned away to blow a stream of smoke down the street, he let his eyes rest for a moment on her half-averted profile, her long, beautiful nose. It was what he’d first noticed about her that day, when he’d been lugging boxes of booze from the van to this same door.
    “I could come to your place tomorrow?” she said, still turned away, a trace of uncertainty in the upward inflection.
    His anger slid away at that, replaced by more complicated emotions. Maybe that night they’d spent together two