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Authors: Francine Pascal
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more information on motorcycles. Harley Davidson was the only brand I could come up with, but I need a couple of other names and a close look at a real bike. Speaking of names, I also need a good one for the young girl who will come in at the end of the first chapter. Chores like these are lumped under the broad title of research and done in bits and pieces all along the way. And there’s nothing I like better. It’s a perfect escape from the computer. Picture an entire day, particularly a magnificent one like today, worked around staring at motorcycles. But I resist. Instead, I pull down the shades to block out some of that tempting sunlight, and click on the machine.
Souls in Darkness
Chapter Two
Time crawled by for Swat until at last the writhing and pressing, the touching and sliding of the wet and shiny bodies on the floor slowed and then ceased.
Now only Swat was awake, and the pungent odor of their sexual emissions tortured her brain as she watched them with a hatred so vicious that were it given life it would have torn through the room and ripped them apart.
Except Avrum. Swat would sooner give up her own life than cause harm to Avrum.
My phone rings.
I grab it before the end of the first ring. People are always put off guard by my fast response, but the phone, besides being inches from my hand, is my pipeline to the outside world and irresistible. The promise of an emergency great enough to warrant my immediate attention is always a hopeful possibility.
“Hello?” I try to control my anticipation.
“Joey?”
It’s my friend Claudia.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing much. I just wondered if you could tear yourself away from the great god Maheely long enough to have lunch.”
I must admit her attitude about Avrum annoys me a tiny bit. There’s no denying that people are repelled by him. He is, after all, a murderer. Still, it’s disappointing that no one seems to make any attempt to take a three-dimensional look at him. I’m particularly bothered by the fact that my own close friends, knowing my involvement in the project, have settled for the same superficial view. Maheely’s a lunatic. Period.
I punish her a little. “I don’t know if I can. . . .”
But it’s obviously a slow day for her so she overlooks my little sulk. “It’s so beautiful out, Joey. Su . . . shi . . .” she singsongs my current passion for Japanese food.
“There is some outside research I could do on motorcycles. . . .”
“Of course there is. I’ll write you the note myself.”
“You shit.”
“Good. I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes. Be downstairs. OK?”
I hang up and simultaneously close down Swat and the rest of the group and turn the monster off.
In less than fifteen minutes I’m downstairs in the lobby, dressed and ready for lunch and heartened by the possibility that all over the country, wherever the sun is shining, other writers are also heading out of their caves to spend the day motorcycle staring or whatever staring they can come up with.
Avrum will have to wait. And since I leave for the coast tomorrow I’m free of the computer for at least four days. Hallelujah!
Chapter Five
I haven’t been to San Francisco since I last visited my sister, Sephra, and that was at least five years ago. The city doesn’t seem to have changed much, but, of course, that’s its charm. With the exception of a few new glass eggboxes it’s pure 1916. Paris and London give me the same feeling. Maybe that’s what people mean when they say San Francisco seems European.
The first time I came here I was very impressed. It seemed to me the perfect city. Everything worked. As a New Yorker, I really appreciated it. Amazing, I thought, but after a few days I began to feel that something was missing. I didn’t know what it was, and then along about the fourth day, late in the afternoon, with that special brilliant San Francisco sun glistening on the sparkling-clean streets and the carefully dressed
Souls in Darkness
Chapter Two
Time crawled by for Swat until at last the writhing and pressing, the touching and sliding of the wet and shiny bodies on the floor slowed and then ceased.
Now only Swat was awake, and the pungent odor of their sexual emissions tortured her brain as she watched them with a hatred so vicious that were it given life it would have torn through the room and ripped them apart.
Except Avrum. Swat would sooner give up her own life than cause harm to Avrum.
My phone rings.
I grab it before the end of the first ring. People are always put off guard by my fast response, but the phone, besides being inches from my hand, is my pipeline to the outside world and irresistible. The promise of an emergency great enough to warrant my immediate attention is always a hopeful possibility.
“Hello?” I try to control my anticipation.
“Joey?”
It’s my friend Claudia.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing much. I just wondered if you could tear yourself away from the great god Maheely long enough to have lunch.”
I must admit her attitude about Avrum annoys me a tiny bit. There’s no denying that people are repelled by him. He is, after all, a murderer. Still, it’s disappointing that no one seems to make any attempt to take a three-dimensional look at him. I’m particularly bothered by the fact that my own close friends, knowing my involvement in the project, have settled for the same superficial view. Maheely’s a lunatic. Period.
I punish her a little. “I don’t know if I can. . . .”
But it’s obviously a slow day for her so she overlooks my little sulk. “It’s so beautiful out, Joey. Su . . . shi . . .” she singsongs my current passion for Japanese food.
“There is some outside research I could do on motorcycles. . . .”
“Of course there is. I’ll write you the note myself.”
“You shit.”
“Good. I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes. Be downstairs. OK?”
I hang up and simultaneously close down Swat and the rest of the group and turn the monster off.
In less than fifteen minutes I’m downstairs in the lobby, dressed and ready for lunch and heartened by the possibility that all over the country, wherever the sun is shining, other writers are also heading out of their caves to spend the day motorcycle staring or whatever staring they can come up with.
Avrum will have to wait. And since I leave for the coast tomorrow I’m free of the computer for at least four days. Hallelujah!
Chapter Five
I haven’t been to San Francisco since I last visited my sister, Sephra, and that was at least five years ago. The city doesn’t seem to have changed much, but, of course, that’s its charm. With the exception of a few new glass eggboxes it’s pure 1916. Paris and London give me the same feeling. Maybe that’s what people mean when they say San Francisco seems European.
The first time I came here I was very impressed. It seemed to me the perfect city. Everything worked. As a New Yorker, I really appreciated it. Amazing, I thought, but after a few days I began to feel that something was missing. I didn’t know what it was, and then along about the fourth day, late in the afternoon, with that special brilliant San Francisco sun glistening on the sparkling-clean streets and the carefully dressed
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