Thorn Tree by Max Ludington

Author:Max Ludington
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

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WHEN JULES TURNED his back, Jack plucked the tiny orange pill off his tongue and palmed it. It had stayed there only about fifteen seconds, but had already begun to soften and crumble. A second later, worried it could seep in through his skin, he dropped it to the sidewalk and wiped the crumbs on his jeans. He hadn’t planned to spit it out, but something came over him once the thing was on his tongue, something that had as much to do with Jules’s newly animated face and gnostic stare as it did with anything else. Whatever could produce this kind of alteration in Jules must be something to be reckoned with, and not something Jack wanted any part of.

They wove their way through the crowd in front of the Fillmore, and Jack occupied himself staring at navels and legs and cotton-brushed nipples. It was a good crowd, lots of chicks. Normally he wouldn’t have wanted to see the Dead, though some of their music was pretty good. He had seen them once in the park, and had dug it up to a point, but got sick of wading through all the weird convolutions and hippie mysticism to get to the sharp riffs and funky blues he liked. He wouldn’t have wasted his time with them again, but with Miranda settled in the apartment for a few weeks now, he had started finding excuses to be gone even when he wasn’t working. The girl had shined on him from the start, and when he was there she never left him alone, always crawling on him, asking questions and wanting him to read to her. He couldn’t say no to her, couldn’t weather the disappointment in her furrowed little brow, and this inability confused him. He also couldn’t fully shake the ridiculous idea that she somehow had access to the parts of his head he dreaded and evaded. Her presence rarely failed to make him feel rotten, no matter how nice he was to her. When he wasn’t there he could put her out of his mind, so he stayed away as much as he could.

Jules’s buddy let them in a side door, and they wandered the crowded lobby inside the venue, smoking and talking with people they knew. Jack saw Shawna, a chick he went home with from time to time, but she was with her old man and wouldn’t even glance sideways at him, though she knew he was there. He left her alone. He was talking to the bass player of another rising local band, whose house he delivered grass to almost daily, when the refraction happened. It wasn’t much, and it didn’t last long, but for a moment he was standing beside himself watching the entire world, and every offhand movement of his fingers as he spoke was a planetary microcosm. And then it was gone. Not gone as in disappeared, but gone like the outdoors is gone when one steps into a windowless room.

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