What Fire Cannot Burn by John Ridley

Author:John Ridley [Ridley, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General, Los Angeles (Calif.), Mystery Fiction, Literary Criticism, Adventure, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Police, Serial Murders, Police - California - Los Angeles, Policewomen, American, Los Angeles, California, African American, Serial Murderers
ISBN: 9780446506380
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Published: 2004-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Thursday was off for Soledad. She got up late thanks to the little white pill she took to help induce the sleep that otherwise rarely came to her. She went swimming. Worked out her bum leg. Hurt like hell. But she wasn’t about to let herself go to waste. Laundry. She gave thought to going to a movie but couldn’t find one she figured she could sit through without later regretting the two hours of her life, the nine dollars of her hard-earned she’d tossed away. She gave thought to calling Vin. Couldn’t particularly think of anything to say to him different or new or somehow meaningful that wasn’t covered in their last pseudo-conversation three or four days prior. She did send off an elongated e-mail to her mother. Soledad had plenty to say to her mother. A dark part of Soledad wondered if her mother was even really sick, or had just tumbled onto a grotesque way to build a relationship with her daughter. Errands were run and Soledad ate and watched the news. She eked out a few more pages of the Mailer book she’d spent closing in on a year and half “reading.” She fucked around on the Internet for a while.

Eight months after his seventy-third birthday a guy fell in love for the first time all over again. A mother was told her child would not live to see the morning. An NBA hoops star who hadn’t started let alone finished college, but still managed to pull in more than twenty mill a year, was refusing to take no for an answer from some girl he’d known all of three and a third hours. A guy who’d never wanted kids was taking his sons to the amusement park for the third time this year thanking God for them every step of the way as, ironically, they were the only things that gave his life meaning.

All this was happening across town, somewhere across the country. Somewhere beyond Soledad. Physically beyond her. Emotionally. In her time and space it was the most ordinary of days that passed utterly without significance. The kind of day, in another forty-eight hours, there would be little of it she would be able to recall with distinction if at all. With absolutely nothing else to do, having wrung herself empty of every approximation of purpose, she lay in bed and let sleep come.

Sleep ignored the invitation.

Soledad debated taking a little white pill. Wasn’t worried about getting hooked. She was worried only that when she ran out, more would be hard to come by as more required a prescription she didn’t have. And taking the pills built up a resistance. As it was, beyond just the sleep they gave her, Soledad dug the knockout that came with the drugs. Made her think that death . . . yeah, it had to be respected, but there was no reason to fear it.

That quick, that easy, Soledad was thinking about death again.

Getting her mind off that, she settled on skipping the pill.

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.