Death of a Butterfly (Sigrid Harald) by Maron Margaret

Author:Maron, Margaret [Maron, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Maron & Company
Published: 2011-03-04T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

The morning after too much cocaine is not like the morning after too much alcohol. One’s head does not throb with the slightest movement, one can think of last night’s dinner without lurching for the bathroom, and one does not necessarily resort to the hair of the dog in order to stabilize the shakes. Nevertheless, the lambent spring sunlight which streamed through faded curtains did nothing to warm Mickey Novak’s spirits.

To the uninitiated, his drippy nose, streaming red eyes, and stuffy head might seem like symptoms of hay fever or a common spring cold, but Novak was bleakly aware of the difference. Ordinarily he was not a heavy user, but last night he’d wanted to blot out everything. Today, he had awakened jittery and anxious in a strange room and it had taken him several minutes to get his bearings.

This particular room might not be familiar, but its tired wallpaper, bare floors, and cheap, minimal furnishings made it the counterpart of a thousand others throughout the city. It could have been the same boardinghouse he’d so hastily moved out of yesterday afternoon.

The room was not particularly dirty; it was, in fact, cleaner than many he’d lived in. All the same, there was a grayness here that would never come bright again and a musty, dusty smell of Lysol and homelessness.

He and Julie had begun in rooms like this. That foster home where the social workers had stuck the two Novak kids had been an apartment of dingy gray rooms.

But Julie had gotten out. And once in a while, when she was between guys and he was between reform schools or prison, she’d let him move in for a few weeks.

With almost physical longing, he thought of Julie’s apartment—nothing faded or secondhand. Everything new and clean. Every object chosen to set off Julie’s soft black hair and her clear skin: sheer white curtains, bright cushions on that orangey-pink couch, cut-glass bowls of yellow flowers. All gone now . . . gone for good.

At twenty-four, Mickey Novak had wasted little time on sentimentality or introspection, but as he paced the linoleum he was filled with a wrenching sense of loss.

Julie could be a real bitch, he thought—a cold-hearted, lying, double-dealing bitch—but he’d never wanted her dead. Not really. Okay, maybe he’d belted her once or twice. God knows she’d deserved it. She played rough herself and if anybody else had pulled that, he’d have killed them long ago. After what Julie’d been through as a kid, though, maybe she needed all the softness and smooth things money could buy. Besides, she’d only done to him what he might have done to her if he’d thought of it first.

He tried to calm himself, knowing that this nervous agitation came as much from snorting coke last night as from what happened yesterday. He hadn’t been this shook-up yesterday. He’d stayed calm, found the key, and got away clean.

Not too clean, he remembered irritably, and looked at his black boots. Flecks of green paint still clung to the instep despite the swabbing he’d given them with lighter fluid last night.

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