Read Online Don't Get in the Car (Kit Tolliver #9) (The Kit Tolliver Stories) by Lawrence Block - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lawrence Block
Ads: Link
other.”
“Yes, we would.”
“And do a lot of other things.”
“Most of which I’ve been thinking about.”
Deep breath. “Can we get back to Kellen, Rita?”
“He was baptized a hundred and fifty-two times.”
“He was? Why, for God’s sake?”
“Exactly.”
“Huh?”
“For God’s sake, and for the sake of a hundred and fifty-one poor souls who went through life without being baptized. It’s a Mormon thing, Kimmie. It’s called proxy baptism. You know how they’ve got this big genealogical research project in Salt Lake City? How they’re trying to get the names of everybody who ever lived?”
“I guess I read something about that.”
“Well, their goal is to baptize all the people who lived and died without going through that sacrament. And participating in the process is one form of missionary work. Instead of turning up on people’s doorsteps—”
“And fucking them senseless.”
“—you go through a ceremony designed to get the unbaptized dead into Heaven.”
“Salvation for the unsaved.”
“That’s the idea. New hope for the dead.”
“I never heard of that before,” she said. “It’s deeply weird.”
“Well, so was Kellen. He wouldn’t go down on me.”
“He wouldn’t? The moron. I would.”
“Would you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh, tell me. Tell me what you’d do.”
In the morning she showered and put on her sweater and jeans and walked to work. On her break she sat down at one of the back-office computers and Googled her way to Mormon proxy baptism. It was pretty much as Rita had reported, and there was no question about it, the whole business was deeply weird.
On the other hand, who was she to hang that label on anything anybody did? She was crisscrossing the country, trying to regrow her psychic hymen by killing every man who ever had sex with her, and she was involved in a wildly exciting lesbian affair with a woman she’d never laid a hand on. How was that for weird?
Two nights later she couldn’t sleep. She’d sat in her room reading until she couldn’t keep her eyes open, and then she got undressed and slipped under the blanket and hovered for half an hour on the edge of consciousness. She almost went under, and then she surfaced, and she sat up in bed, knowing it wasn’t going to happen.
There was one man left, one blot on her record, and no way on earth to track him down. You could find anything and anybody with Google, but you had to have at least a vague idea what you were searching for, and all she had was a first name and the vaguest possible recollection of a face, undefined in her mind but for a gap between his two top incisors.
And she knew where she’d picked him up, in a Race Street bar in Philadelphia, but all that told her was that he was from some place other than Philadelphia, because he took her to his hotel room, and he wouldn’t be staying in a hotel if he lived there, would he? And he’d told her his name was Sid, and maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t, and where did that leave her? The one man who’d fucked her and lived to tell the tale was not from Philadelphia, and his name was or wasn’t Sid. And, just to narrow it down still further, he had a gap between his teeth.
Wonderful. Google that, see where it gets you.
She got out of bed, put on the clothes she’d worn earlier. Was it too late to call Rita? No, not with the time difference. She picked up the phone, put it down again. It was, she decided, not too late to call but too early. Maybe in a few days, maybe in a week, but not yet.
She didn’t know what she was going to do about Rita. Well, how could she? She didn’t know what she was going to do about her whole goddamn life.
She couldn’t keep on doing this forever, could she? Shedding one name and taking on another, leaving one town and moving on to another, sleeping with men and leaving them lifeless? How long could you do that?
She’d rarely stopped to take long views, living in the moment, but
“Yes, we would.”
“And do a lot of other things.”
“Most of which I’ve been thinking about.”
Deep breath. “Can we get back to Kellen, Rita?”
“He was baptized a hundred and fifty-two times.”
“He was? Why, for God’s sake?”
“Exactly.”
“Huh?”
“For God’s sake, and for the sake of a hundred and fifty-one poor souls who went through life without being baptized. It’s a Mormon thing, Kimmie. It’s called proxy baptism. You know how they’ve got this big genealogical research project in Salt Lake City? How they’re trying to get the names of everybody who ever lived?”
“I guess I read something about that.”
“Well, their goal is to baptize all the people who lived and died without going through that sacrament. And participating in the process is one form of missionary work. Instead of turning up on people’s doorsteps—”
“And fucking them senseless.”
“—you go through a ceremony designed to get the unbaptized dead into Heaven.”
“Salvation for the unsaved.”
“That’s the idea. New hope for the dead.”
“I never heard of that before,” she said. “It’s deeply weird.”
“Well, so was Kellen. He wouldn’t go down on me.”
“He wouldn’t? The moron. I would.”
“Would you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh, tell me. Tell me what you’d do.”
In the morning she showered and put on her sweater and jeans and walked to work. On her break she sat down at one of the back-office computers and Googled her way to Mormon proxy baptism. It was pretty much as Rita had reported, and there was no question about it, the whole business was deeply weird.
On the other hand, who was she to hang that label on anything anybody did? She was crisscrossing the country, trying to regrow her psychic hymen by killing every man who ever had sex with her, and she was involved in a wildly exciting lesbian affair with a woman she’d never laid a hand on. How was that for weird?
Two nights later she couldn’t sleep. She’d sat in her room reading until she couldn’t keep her eyes open, and then she got undressed and slipped under the blanket and hovered for half an hour on the edge of consciousness. She almost went under, and then she surfaced, and she sat up in bed, knowing it wasn’t going to happen.
There was one man left, one blot on her record, and no way on earth to track him down. You could find anything and anybody with Google, but you had to have at least a vague idea what you were searching for, and all she had was a first name and the vaguest possible recollection of a face, undefined in her mind but for a gap between his two top incisors.
And she knew where she’d picked him up, in a Race Street bar in Philadelphia, but all that told her was that he was from some place other than Philadelphia, because he took her to his hotel room, and he wouldn’t be staying in a hotel if he lived there, would he? And he’d told her his name was Sid, and maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t, and where did that leave her? The one man who’d fucked her and lived to tell the tale was not from Philadelphia, and his name was or wasn’t Sid. And, just to narrow it down still further, he had a gap between his teeth.
Wonderful. Google that, see where it gets you.
She got out of bed, put on the clothes she’d worn earlier. Was it too late to call Rita? No, not with the time difference. She picked up the phone, put it down again. It was, she decided, not too late to call but too early. Maybe in a few days, maybe in a week, but not yet.
She didn’t know what she was going to do about Rita. Well, how could she? She didn’t know what she was going to do about her whole goddamn life.
She couldn’t keep on doing this forever, could she? Shedding one name and taking on another, leaving one town and moving on to another, sleeping with men and leaving them lifeless? How long could you do that?
She’d rarely stopped to take long views, living in the moment, but
Similar Books
