Read Online Lost Between Houses by David Gilmour - Free Book Online Page A

her mouth open, just a bit, not gross,but you’d have thought her parents would have jumped on that one. I can’t even say “anyways” without my mother making a fuss. It may seem mean but it sort of relaxed me seeing Scarlet do stuff wrong.
    “Start,” she said, pointing to the toast.
    “I can also tell the future,” I said.
    “Like, for example, what?”
    “Well, for example, sometimes I know the phone’s going to ring. So I pick it up. I even know who it is. I inherited it from my mother, she’s psychic. I called her once from Vancouver. She picked up the phone and said, ‘Hello, Simon,’ just like that. She hadn’t seen me for three weeks.”
    “So do you know what’s going to happen to you and me?”
    “No. But I knew you’d call.”
    “Liar.”
    “I did.”
    “I didn’t even know.”
    “Well, I did. I wasn’t surprised at all. Couldn’t you hear that, me not being surprised?”
    “You sounded pretty excited.”
    “Well, I’m always like that. But that’s not the same as surprised.”
    “So when you know what’s going to happen to you and me, will you tell me?”
    “Sure.”
    “Even if it’s bad?”
    “Especially if it’s bad.”
    I figured it was time to quit while I was ahead and stop talking. So I did. And ate my toast.
    “I don’t usually eat in the morning,” I said, which was a king-size whopper, I eat like a wolf all the time. Even more than my brother, which makes my skinniness something of a mystery.
    Scarlet lit a cigarette. You could see by the way she held it, hardly noticing, that she’d had a cigarette before in the morning. The smoke floated across the room to me. I liked the way it smelt. This is a different league, I thought. People smoking in their house like it’s no big deal.
    “Do your parents let you smoke in the house?”
    “Depends.”
    “On what?”
    “On what kind of mood they’re in.”
    “My mother gets me to light her cigarettes for her when she’s driving.”
    “Do you want one?”
    “Sure.”
    She watched me light up.
    She sort of grinned and looked out the window.
    “What?” I said.
    “You look like you don’t smoke. The way you hold it.”
    “How does it look?”
    “Sort of
feminine.”
    “Really?”
    A bit later, I called my brother.
    “Hey, Harper,” I said, “it’s me.”
    “Where are you?”
    “I’m at Scarlet’s.”
    “Fuck man, you got to get back here. The old lady called this morning. She wanted to fucking talk to you.”
    “What’d you say?”
    “I said you were down at the dock. But she’s coming home tomorrow. So you better get back here.”
    “I’m coming.”
    “When?”
    “Tonight.”
    “For sure?”
    “For sure.”
    There was a pause and I heard him take a bite of apple.
    “So you guys up all night?”
    “I got a bit of sleep.”
    “Her parents still away?”
    “Yep.”
    “She there?”
    “Yep.”
    “Like right beside you?”
    “Yep.”
    He hung it there for a moment, then he changed gears.
    “Cool. But don’t fuck me on this one.”
    “No sweat,” I said.
    I was feeling a whole lot better, relieved really, when I put down the phone. I don’t like people being pissed off with me, even if I’m in the right. It nags at me. Anyway. We set out for downtown. It was pretty lively outside. Warm breeze, people walking around. Saturday is always a great day in the city. A subway train roared by above ground, I looked over, and I had one of those funny feelings that I was going to remember that moment for the rest of my life. Weird, those times, they just stick in your bean like a photograph, not the moment before, just that one, and not always because something’s going on. Sometimes it’s nothing at all, like a train roaring by, and Scarlet just standing there, her hair not quite touching her shirt collar.
    We walked along Eglinton Avenue, past the bike shop where the old man bought me my first gear bike. Me talking away, I mean just incapable of shutting the fuck up. On the other side ofthe