Imaginary Crimes by Toby Green

Author:Toby Green
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

London 2004

I

She was not dead – she would not give them that satisfaction. They hadn’t killed her yet even though she knew that that was their intention. Every time she moved they tracked her. It was like a game of chess in which the powerful pieces were advancing from both sides. They pursued her from city to city. They were hunters, but she refused to let them hunt her for to be hunted meant that everything would end.

Were things really any different in the English-speaking capital? It seemed a straightforward question but Dolores knew that were no straightforward questions. The eyes of Pepe were just like the eyes of her bosses in other cities. Look busy, he told her, and she – was she not in permanent business? – gathering the glasses, clearing the stacks of plates from the dirt-encrusted sink and loading the industrial dishwasher, wiping the bar clean. Look busy, Madrid, he told her, his command accentuated by his use of her family name. Ah that’s it, he said – Pepe was not even looking at Dolores, as if knowing how she would try harder to satisfy – that’s it, clear it all up, clear away all the empties.

Pepe was Dolores’s patrón. His wife, Sebastiana, tried to ignore the violence of his every motion. But even the crisp rustle as he turned the pages of his newspaper betrayed him. He had chosen to employ Dolores just as he would choose when she should be fired. He filled the doss-rooms above his bar with illegals from Cuba, Colombia and Ecuador, and flirted with them nightly. Thus did he construct his world, utterly false, utterly fantastic, just waiting to disintegrate.

Tonight Pepe was in expansive mood. It was after all the winter time. People came in earlier and drank more quickly, so to line their veins against the coldness that was outside. They were the ones in command, the supremacists. Profits soared, and even Dolores was all the busier. You’ll get your reward, bonita, he would say if ever she mentioned a raise, reminding her of things that she had heard in childhood. But naturally Pepe’s intentions were dishonourable. Hey bonita, he admitted to her once, with Sebastiana sitting beside him and thereby dignifying his coarseness with the respectability that might have fitted a sociable crook, this city is the arsehole of the world, that must be why I’m at home here. Hey bonita – yes he was feeling expansive tonight, things were busy, after all, in the arsehole of the world – don’t worry about clearing up behind the bar tonight, I’ll hire some Polish scum tomorrow, throw them a tenner.

Dolores could feel his eyes sucking her in through a straw. It made her feel like one of those Poles who Pepe mocked. She loathed it, loathed Pepe acting as if he was one of those who had arrived when he was imported scum, just like her. There was no sense of generosity or charity in him. He did not reach into his pockets to give coins to one of the begging poor under the arches of Waterloo Bridge.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.