Read Online Bowery Girl by Kim Taylor - Free Book Online Page A

purses. But the faces of the people came to her at night, and she felt guilt then, like hot ashes.
    Annabelle came up beside her. She kept her hands crossed over her stomach. The baby was obvious now.
    â€œYou’re gonna have to tell Tommy, instead of avoiding him and the dancehall,” Mollie said.
    â€œHe’s avoiding me, too.”
    â€œYeah, well.”
    â€œI’m not gonna be able to work much longer.”
    â€œI know.” Mollie felt a thick pain begin in her head.
    â€œI’m gonna need to do something else.”
    â€œThen be my stall. You know how to do that.”
    â€œI mean after that, Moll. When we’re in Brooklyn. I want a job. I’m sick of men touching me. And I can’t do it—not with a baby.”
    â€œA job. That’s funny.”
    â€œWhat does that mean?”
    â€œYou been walking the streets all your life. You tell me what else you can do.”
    Annabelle stopped in her tracks. “Fuck you, Mollie Flynn.”
    Mollie knew she shouldn’t have said it, but she also knew it was true. Or had been, until the goddamn baby. Until the money on the table had started to dwindle to dimes and quarters. “I’m sorry.”
    Annabelle walked away from Mollie, then turned on the heel of her red shoe and said, “I can change. And one day I’m gonna be able to walk straight into Mass and not have one goddamn sin to confess.”
    â€œI said I was sorry.”
    â€œDo the job for Tommy. I don’t care.”
    Mollie watched the bounce of curls as Annabelle stomped away.
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    â€œBuy a flower or your future?”
    Mollie started. She turned to the rumpled figure in the doorway.
    A woman sat cross-legged, a spread of cards in the rags of her skirt. The crown of her head was mottled brown and pink, showing through tufts of white hair. She raised her gaze to Mollie; her eyes were milky and blind. The red paint on her lips crept into the crevices age had dug around her mouth. A basket of spring’s first wildflowers, obviously pulled from an empty lot, edged with the brown of frost and sighing over the sides, rested nearby.
    â€œWell, hell. Hermione Montreal,” Mollie said. How often she and Annabelle had sat in Hermione’s burgundy-festooned apartment, sneezing at the dust, and giggling from the whiskeys she’d proffered them.
    â€œAh, my fame precedes me. Flower or future?”
    â€œWhat happened to you?”
    â€œThe ides of progress. My building was ripped down on the approach to the bridge. Flower or your future?”
    â€œI don’t got money for either.”
    â€œThe day is sweet. Indulge me.” She held out her gnarled hand. “I do not bite.”
    When Mollie set her hand in Hermione’s, she felt the tick of the old woman’s pulse against her own. She saw the burgundy curtains flung to the street, the great wrecking ball smashing through the tenement, the set of tiny whiskey glasses shattered on the floor. Then there was again only her hand in the old woman’s.
    â€œPick a card.”
    Mollie ran her fingers over the edges of the cards, felt the oil from so many hands. Then she pulled one from the arc.
    â€œWhat is it?” Hermione asked.
    â€œA wheel,” Mollie said.
    â€œThe Wheel of Fortune. All of life contained within its circle: sadness and joy, cruelty and kindness, the future and the past. It stops for no one and nothing, for it is life itself. It may roll backwards to that you no longer wish to see, or forward to that you are terrified to know. It is your choice which way the wheel rolls. Pick another. Just one more.”
    Mollie crouched in front of Hermione.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œSwords.”
    â€œHow many?”
    â€œFive.”
    â€œAh, memory and fear. Five fears: betrayal, abandonment, ruin, joy, love. You hide behind walls to escape the fear that what hurt you once will hurt you again. But which is the fear that hurts you