White Horses by Alice Hoffman

Author:Alice Hoffman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781497652415
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

FIVE

ONCE A MONTH SILVER met the man called Vallais in an apartment on Russian Hill. Vallais couldn’t be telephoned. The only way to reach him and set up an appointment was through a post-office box, and his address was the most important thing Silver had stolen from Angel Gregory’s apartment in those days before Gregory was sent to Vacaville Prison. At first Vallais had asked why Gregory no longer came to see him, why Silver had taken his place; after a while he no longer asked, it made very little difference to him whether he sold cocaine and marijuana to one man or to that man’s enemy, and he guarded himself against betrayal: his apartment was nothing more than a front, there was no way to trace him, no possessions that belonged to him on Russian Hill other than a small oak table and three wicker chairs. Besides, Silver was a perfect client; he asked no questions, he wore his black linen suit cut so close it seemed a part of him, he never complained, he was always polite. But waiting hours for Vallais when he was late was not in Silver’s nature. Each time he went to Russian Hill, Silver was more convinced than ever that someday soon he would have to find a way to bypass Vallais; he would find a route to small Mexican towns where there was never any wind, he would make his own journeys to Colombia, to villages where the earth was the color of geraniums, he would not have to depend on Vallais, he wouldn’t have to smile at another man unless he chose to.

At first Silver hadn’t even kept a few ounces of marijuana when he resold the drugs he bought from Vallais. He didn’t care much for drugs, he liked feeling wired; when he walked down the street he had more than a thousand eyes, he was ready to strike, and nothing got by him—not a whisper, not a move. But lately there had been nights when he couldn’t sleep. It was then Silver reached for the carved redwood box in which he had begun to keep some extra marijuana, rolled a joint, and sat in the dark, watching Lee sleep. It would not be until much later, when the sky had just begun to grow light, that Silver would finally put his head on the pillow. And even then he was sometimes unable to sleep; very often he would think about the summer spent in New Mexico, and by morning it always seemed that his grandmother’s rosebushes were growing up the side of the house, covering the windowpanes with thorns, with petals so sweet their scent could hypnotize.

It was in the spring of that year when he first had difficulty sleeping, and Teresa came to live with them, that Silver realized that he was being followed. He heard footsteps behind him every time he walked down the street, he sensed another man’s heartbeat. When he drove through the city, a

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