Broken Monsters. Lauren Beukes

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СКАЧАТЬ seemed like a dead thing under his hands. Until he heard Lou was back. Lou and Charlie. It’s good to be driving with a purpose, but that’s the easy part.

      The talking was hard. Asking people if they’d seen a redhead in an old silver Ford Colt with a kid with her. He had to make up stories. They didn’t like that he was just a dad looking for his kid. Because that came with a big ugly question mark: what did you do? Nothing. That’s the problem. He let her go.

      He went to the diner where he and Lou first met, and the manager said that she’d been back working her old job, but he had had to let her go when he caught her stealing singles from the tip jar. He heard she was living out of her car now, a real shame, but what was he supposed to do?

      It gave Clayton a lead though, because there are only so many places a woman with a kid and no home but a car can go. He tried all the RV parks around Detroit, and then further out. In Muskegon, he found a lady who’d been renting her a trailer who said she’d got a letter from Lou promising to pay the month’s rent she skipped out on if she’d forward her mail to a Mail Boxes Etc. in Traverse City. She gave him the thin wedge of envelopes (bills, all bills) to pass on to her direct. Such a sweet little boy, the landlady said.

      He tried to josh with her, about how he wanted to teach Charlie to use a welding torch, when he was a little older, of course, because a little kid might burn his own face right off, but the words came out wrong, and the woman frowned and said maybe it wasn’t Traverse City, maybe it was Grand Rapids. And she should probably hang on to the mail after all, but it sure was nice to meet him and good luck finding Lou, and could he please remind her about the rent.

      After that, it was easy. The Mail Boxes Etc. was right next to a Walmart and there, in the parking lot, was the silver Colt, nestled up next to a shiny new RV with lace curtains and cream trim parked next to a row of trees clinging to their last leaves.

      Across the lot, the glass storefront beckoned, a shining portal into the land of anything you want, 24/7. Come in, come in, it’s all in here.

      Clayton knows you can camp overnight outside a Walmart, no trailer-park fees required. You could see the whole of America that way. A pilgrimage for the restless and the lost.

      He pulled in next to the shopping carts corralled between the railings and turned off his truck. He sat there for a moment, under the corn-colored lights, listening to the engine tick over, noticing how the dark puddles were full of reflected neon.

      Sleeping in cars, he thought. That’s no good for anyone. They could come home with him. Her and Charlie. He’d have to tidy up, but he’s got the room to spare.

      He swung open the door of his truck and climbed down. Her car still had a crumpled bumper, same as when he met her. Both of their vehicles were a little battered, he thought, just like they were.

      Lou was in front, her seat tilted right back. Funny how you can recognize someone just by the shape of their head. He thought he spotted the kid in the back of the car. Mop of curly hair among the rubble of their life. Boxes and blankets and crap. A CD boombox on top, the blue LED display the only light in the vehicle.

      He tapped on the Colt’s window. Once, twice, his knuckles freckled with white scars and the beginnings of liver spots and old cigarette burns from back when he thought that might help.

      ‘Hey Lou,’ he said. ‘It’s me.’

      She shifted, then sat upright in alarm. The stripe of light across her face and her wild red hair made her look like a girl in a music video, only not as pretty.

      ‘Roll down the window,’ he said and she did, but only a thin slice, enough for him to hear the kids’ lullabies playing on the CD.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered, probably harsher than she meant to.

      ‘I came to say hello.’

      ‘Oh no,’ she said, louder, tilting her chin to get her mouth closer to the crack of the window. ‘Get your ass out of here. I don’t want to see you. You hear me, Clayton Broom?’

      ‘I was in the area.’

      ‘Detroit’s four hours away.’

      ‘Maybe I live here now. It’s a nice place, Traverse City.’ He’d only seen what he drove through to get here, the night lying heavy on the empty streets. That’s when the borders are the most porous between the worlds, and unnatural things leak out of people’s heads and move freely.

      ‘You’re lying again.’

      ‘I joke around a little, I’m a joker.’

      ‘Ain’t funny, Clayton. Wait.’ She struggled with her seatbelt. He thought that was a strange thing to do, clip yourself in to a parked car. Maybe it was to hold her in place for sleeping. Like men strapping themselves into bunks on ships.

      She yanked up the knob of the lock and eased the door open so she could slip out. The light inside was busted. She was wearing tracksuit pants, a green sweatshirt, and woolly pink socks. She was going to get them filthy out here.

      She took his arm in a C-clamp grip, and steered him away from the car, right under the light, so he could see how much the color in her hair had faded. She used to dye it deep red, like hotel carpets, but the henna was growing out, showing brown and gray roots. Calico cat. Like the one that used to live with them when he was squatting with all those young artist kids in the building overlooking the kosher butchers in Eastern Market.

      ‘Why are you here?’ Lou demanded. ‘Middle of the night.’

      ‘It’s not okay for a man to look up an old flame?’

      ‘Flame.’ She laughed, but the sound was as brittle as the neon light of the logo. ‘What we had was a matchstick, Clayton. Burned out, like that.’ She snapped her fingers.

      He tried again. ‘I wanted to see how you are.’

      She put out her arms and performed a clumsy pirouette in her socks. She stumbled, which made his heart break a little more. ‘You’ve seen,’ she said. ‘Now you can take off.’

      ‘You’re living out of a car, Lou.’

      ‘Only for now. I had a place. I’ll get one again. I got a job interview here next week.’

      ‘Here?’

      ‘You never met someone who worked in a Walmart before?’

      ‘How is Charlie?’

      ‘Fine. He’s fine.’ She turned cautious.

      ‘I want to see him.’

      ‘You don’t got no business with him. Besides, he’s not even here.’

      ‘Where is he, then?’

      ‘Around. Visiting.’ Her eyes skipped to the car. One blue, one brown, the most striking thing about her sharp little face. Just like that calico cat. It used to claw and bite if you tried to pick it up. He shut it up in the cupboard above the sink once, as a joke. It broke plates. Scratched one of the girls up when she opened it. Hard to say who was more mad, the girl or the cat. He was sorry she got hurt, but it was funny as hell.

      He tried СКАЧАТЬ