The Harker File by Marc Olden

Author:Marc Olden [Olden, Marc]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-6060-9
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2012-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

16.

THE PHONE RANG NINE times before she picked it up. I counted every ring.

She’d been asleep. Her soft voice was tentative, and vulnerable, the way a woman is when she’s suddenly awakened.

“Um, yes? Who is it?” She made little noises in her throat, getting in touch with this world slowly and not too surely.

I cleared my throat, swallowed twice, and kept staring at the ceiling. My hotel room was dark. I lay naked on the bed in the humid night, both sweaty hands gripping the receiver.

“Who is this?” Her voice was stronger now. Irritation was edging over into anger, reasonable enough when somebody pulls you from sleep and just breathes into the phone. It was good to hear her voice, anger and all.

“Me,” I said finally. Might as well kick it off with a clever line. I was bare-ass naked in the hot night. Lonely and scared, too. That’s why I’d dialed Loni in New York.

“Me?” Her voice was slightly higher pitched now, effectively getting across the idea that me was a silly name for a grown man. “Harker? Is that you, Harker?”

I sat up on my sagging mattress. It was like sitting up in a canoe, except a canoe was softer. “Yeah, Loni, it’s me. I thought you might have the machine on. Took a chance. Called anyway. Never did like that recorder. I … I—”

Jesus. I’d run out of things to say. Me, the master of words. Tapped out. I pawed the air with one hand, trying to make the words come so I could say something to this woman who was so much a part of me.

“Harker, are you all right? Is anything wrong?”

In everybody’s life, there is one thing he wants badly and shouldn’t be allowed to have. It can be fattening foods, booze, sex with animals, narcotics, driving down crowded highways at two hundred miles an hour, free falling from planes. It can be making love with whips, swallowing broken glass, gambling, riding on top of elevators, drinking turpentine. Mine was Loni.

I had two things in common with those who wanted this particular something that they shouldn’t be allowed to have: mine was no good for me. And I wanted it anyway.

“Hey, baby,” I said. “You know me. A cat that lands on its feet.”

“Cat that lands on its feet, huh? Harker, do you know what time it is?”

“Almost three in the morning. Couldn’t sleep. Things on my mind. Hey, did I disturb you? I mean are you—?” It hurt like hell to ask her that last question, which is why I stopped asking it. She understood.

“I’m alone. What’s going on? Three o’clock in the morning!” She seemed surprised that such an hour actually existed.

I was feeling sorry for myself, scared, alone. But calling her was tough enough. No sense groveling unnecessarily, I always say. “You know me,” I said. “Don’t know where I’ll be, when I’ll get a chance to call. So, I just—” I sagged down on my mattress some more. It was like a hammock, minus the shady trees at either end.

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.