Bones

Page 397

395 but he decided not to go back. His head was in pain from hunger, but there was a lightness to his body that he didn't want to coarsen. The air itself was shining as he crossed Ocean Avenue and walked as fast as he could past the civic auditorium and up a side street that turned into a dingy residential neighborhood within a block, and if he could take enough of it into his lungs he would float. The neighborhood was filled with peeling frame houses that had outside staircases with mailboxes hung in a row beneath them next to the electric meters. A green ambulance turned the corner behind him and slowly passed him with its right front tire flaccid as a bag of porridge, making a sound like flup flup flup. A bare ass stared at him from the rear window and remained there, smiling, until the ambulance slowly sank below the brow of the next hill, shimmering in the heat waves that rose from the asphalt until it winked out. He cut across to Ocean Park along a street lined with dense spruce trees and garbage cans crushed in a row along the curb. He couldn't bear the pace any longer and broke into a run up the hill to his own building, and climbed the stairs to his own room and fumbled the key at his lock. His head was pounding but was otherwise dormant at last. On the other side of the door, he knew, he would find himself lying naked on his bed, a crushed bag of corn chips on the floor beside him and his hands locked across his chest. He would be bloated and pale. He would have a bemused smile on his cold lips because he would be in a place no man had seen and come back from. He was a long time getting the key into the lock because his shoulders kept shaking and he couldn't aim it, and then, once it was in place, he couldn't get it to turn. But that was all right. He put his head against the door to steady himself. He could take his time. It would turn sooner or later.