White Apples Read Online Free PDF Page A

water. He leapt up. He had been sitting on a curb two feet from a snarl of rushing city traffic. He was still naked. The nightmare we all have at one time now surrounded Ettrich: the one where we alone are naked in the middle of some downtown city street. Every•one else around us is properly dressed and staring.
    People were certainly staring at Ettrich. Staring, pointing, hoot•ing. A few feet away, Coco Hallis stared at him too with furious eyes but she was naked too. Despite everything that had just hap•pened, everything he had just learned, Ettrich still self-consciously covered his package with his hands. That made the crowd laugh and jabber even more.
    A handsome thug in a brown leather jacket walked over to Coco and after looking her up and down appreciatively said, "Hey, baby, I'm buying whatever it is you're selling."
    Ignoring him, Coco asked, "Are you ready to pay attention now?" "Hey baby, don't be rude. I'm talking to you."
    Coco turned slowly to the guy and said just loud enough for him to hear, "And now I'll talk to you, Bernie. You made two women pregnant but you won't take any responsibility for the chil•dren. You've never even seen them. You didn't go to your mother's funeral, and the woman you're sleeping with these days, Emily Gal•vin, is doing it a lot with another guy when you're on the road. Would you like to hear more?"
    Bernie's eyes widened in trapped-like-a-rat alarm. He backped•aled away from Coco fast.
    "Can we go now, Vincent? I'm getting cold out here." She gestured around them, taking in the whole city and the growing crowd that seemed to have gathered for the specific purpose of staring.
    "Yes! Get us out of here."
    Before he'd finished speaking, they were back in her bedroom. It was warm and dark and still funky smelling from their good sex not so long before.
    "What am I supposed to do, Coco? What do you want me to do?"
    She watched him but said nothing. Her silence was intimidating (especially in light of what she had just done), but not threatening. Ettrich knew for certain that she was waiting for him to figure out what to do next. Clueless, he felt for his pulse again and couldn't bear the fact there was nothing beneath his skin to certify that he was alive.
    He remembered what it was like having a pulse. How it would thump hard in his throat when he was nervous at a business meeting or putting the first serious moves on a woman. If he lay on his left side in bed he could hear its dull double drumbeat, a sound that always made him vaguely uneasy.
    We know the heart is there, we know the blood is there. But hearing the lub-dub of our pulse reminds us that we are only chug•ging machines and there is little godlike or immortal about our makeup.
    Feeling his silent wrist now, he looked at it a long time as if trying to remember something. He took a deep, deep breath and let it out slowly, saying, "Man! Man oh man oh man..." As he said it he could hear a doorbell ringing way in the back of his mind's house. Some part of him went to answer it. Standing there larger than life was the word "Man" and behind it the name Mann: Bruno Mann.
    It took a moment for it to sink in. Ettrich looked at Coco and said the name. She remained impassive but was clearly waiting for him to continue.
    "If Bruno is dead but I saw him, then he's in the same situation as me. And you were talking to him in the restaurant. You said I came back to life the moment I saw you." One of the candle flames on her dresser sputtered. Ettrich glanced up and licked his bottom lip while his mind caught its breath and moved to the next thought. "So it's probably true with everyone this happens to—you meet them the moment they come back." Now he was talking out loud to himself.
    Coco was there but she was not as important as his own understanding. "I've got to find Bruno and talk to him about it." He tapped one index finger against the other and kept doing it. Things were becoming clearer; a plan was emerging. "Obviously