Getting Off: A Novel of Sex & Violence (Hard Case Crime) by Block Lawrence & Emerson Jill

Author:Block, Lawrence & Emerson, Jill [Block, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780857685995
Publisher: Hard Case Crime
Published: 2011-09-19T16:00:00+00:00

SEVENTEEN

“It’s pronounced Why-reeka,” she said, “and it’s supposed to be a Shasta Indian word meaning white mountain, but I haven’t run into any Shasta Indians who can say one way or the other.”

“Isn’t there a Eureka as well?”

“There is,” she said, “and my own theory is that they were trying to call it that and found out there already was one, so they changed how they spelled it. I mean, they were both Gold Rush boomtowns, right? But Mark Twain had another explanation.”

“Oh?”

“Something about a sign for a bakery, and it was reverse-printed on glass so it read backwards, Y-R-E-K-A, and the B was worn off. But that seems farfetched to me.”

“Because the letters would be backwards,” he said. “The R and the K, anyway.”

“What I think happened,” she said, “is Mark Twain noticed that the town’s name spelled backwards was Akery, and he just made up the story from there. I mean, he made things up, didn’t he?”

“You mean A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court didn’t really happen? Another illusion shattered. But you’re getting along all right in Yreka? Your aunt’s not driving you around the bend?”

“I’m okay,” she said. “And that’s really great news about the board. That’s a lot more important than how this place got its dumb name.”

*

Of course she wasn’t in Yreka, or anywhere in California. She was in Baltimore, in a three-story house on the edge of Fell’s Point, where she’d managed to rent a room. She got a part-time job clerking in a copy shop that doubled as an Internet café. One of her perks was free use of a computer during her off-hours, and she spent a lot of time free-associating her way from website to website. That was how she’d come by all that information about Yreka, which she’d passed on to Peter the next time she spoke with him.

And the following day she looked up A Connecticut Yankee. That led her to Bing Crosby, who starred in one of the film adaptations, and that led her somewhere else. The Internet, she thought, was like life itself. One thing kept leading to another.

There were singles bars nearby, and shops and restaurants that drew out-of-towners. But she kept a low profile and didn’t wander far afield. She worked and surfed the net, she took her meals at a cafeteria around the corner from the copy shop, and she watched TV.

Now and then she used the phone.

“A halfway house,” she said. “And it’s in New York City? Oh, in the Bronx? Well, that could be a good thing, Peter. And that’s just where you’ll be living, isn’t it? You can come and go as you please.”

They talked about it as a way of easing the transition from imprisonment to freedom, but what she liked was the coincidence of the location. All of this had started in the Bronx, in the Riverdale section, and it was fitting that it should end there.

“I wish I could be there when you walk through the gates,” she said.

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