Follow Me Down by Kio Stark

Author:Kio Stark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cursor
Published: 2011-06-28T00:00:00+00:00

The next night, I’m on the way home from a late dinner with Natalie when Dealer comes up behind me out of what seemed the empty darkness. “Hey pretty girl,” he says. “How you feelin’?” His shaved head is shining in the moonlight.

“I’m good,” I tell him. “You?”

He walks alongside me. He’s a little too close. He could put his arm around me from where he is, and I’d just fit under the crook of his armpit. I can feel the heat of his body, the fabric of his jacket just a whisper away from mine. I don’t like it at all.

“You know what, me, I’m fine as long as everything goes like it supposed to do.”

“Yeah.”

“Boys told me somebody messin’ around in that empty lot few nights ago.” He points to the little street.

I’m not sure how to play this. It’s a warning, but I don’t know how it’s supposed to work. “That a fact?”

He stops and holds onto the meat of my arm. “Don’t fuck around, you on thin ice here now. All the eyes on this street are mine.”

I look into his. Their warm twinkle is gone. They are hard and dark as the tinted windows on his car.

“So you and your skinny boyfriend. What you doin’ breaking into that lot?”

I pull my arm loose from his grip. “Thin ice? It’s your lot? I’m sorry. I’ll pay for the lock.”

“Ain’t no matter who holds the paper on it. What I wanna know is what you doin’ there?”

“I was taking pictures.” It’s the truth. I have evidence.

“Taking pictures. In the middle of the night in a lot full of weeds and rats. You a funny one.”

If I didn’t feel so guilty, what would I say? I’d rattle on. “The light off the canal is pretty. I made some long exposures. You want to see?”

“How come you didn’t take them from the end of the street. Canal just as pretty there.”

I am sparring, a fleet footed bantamweight, I’m dancing around him, just a second ahead. “The light pole on the other side. I wanted it in the center. Symmetry.”

He shakes his head. A little corner of a smile.

I’ve got him, I think. Pressure’s off. “I poked around while I was waiting for the camera—it took a couple minutes each shot. Was there a house there before? It seemed like maybe there was a fire.”

He stops me in my tracks. I look at him, I tip my head to the side, puzzled, innocent. “What’s the big deal about the lot?”

“The big deal is it ain’t none of your concern. You feel me?”

“Okay,” I say. “I got it.” I want him to get out of my way, but he stands there, it feels like forever, a wall between me and what I want to know, between me and the place where I am safe.

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