Read Online The Sanity's Edge Saloon (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 1) by Mark Reynolds - Free Book Online Page B

boarded windows and dead neon promises of three kinds of draft beer
and live nude dancers . It was closed.
    Halfway down the block, Jack found
the newspaper kiosk that the Writer said he would meet him at. It jutted from
the corner of an alleyway, an afterthought forgotten like the empty newspaper
dispenser. A simple wooden box liberally painted in pine green, sun-blistered
and flaking, full of magazines and unattended. He thought that perhaps he was
somehow missing something; that the owner was simply crouched inside ripping
open newspaper bundles or inventorying candy bars. But after a couple minutes,
Jack was forced to conclude the stand was abandoned.
    He scanned the headlines of
newspapers and supermarket tabloids, nothing catching his attention. There was
speculation about the extra-marital affair of Hollywood’s latest rising star.
The Dow fell yesterday. More gossip over the private life of a member of the
British royal family. One astrologer’s predictions about actresses currently
appearing in this month’s top-ten rated television shows. Magazines covered the
back wall, promises of in-depth stories on world events, business advice,
sport-fishing tips, golf hints, make-up suggestions, sexual pleasure. A buck
caught in a camera-man’s cross-hairs stared at him from across the stand. An
airbrushed woman, naked but discretely concealed by strategic banner boxes and
artfully placed hands, smiled invitingly. Her expression, like the eyes of the
white-tail—like the place itself—was empty.
    “She’s not for you!”
    Jack turned, startled by a man
standing not two feet from him in a filth-covered overcoat, scuffed work boots,
and threadbare pants that might have been faded brown or grime-darkened khaki.
The man’s face was shadowed with dirt and beard bristles in which he stored
bits of leaves and dried residue—maybe a previous meal, maybe phlegm, maybe
vomit; Jack didn’t care to know which. But the man’s eyes were as bright as
glacial ice, and more than half-mad.
    “She’s mine! She’s not for you!” the
vagrant shouted again.
    Jack stared back at him, hands
clutching tighter at the straps of his bags. “Okay.”
    “Do you know where unicorns go when they die?” the vagrant demanded,
thrusting his grizzled face towards Jack like a tortoise stretching from its
shell. His breath reeked: rotting teeth, cheap wine, sweet junk gone bad. “Do
you?”
    Jack slowly shook his head, no.
    “Anywhere they want,” the vagrant
answered crisply. “Do you understand? Do … you … understand ?”
    Jack nodded, yes, but it was a lie.
He understood nothing.
    Seemingly content with his
willingness to listen and nod in all the right places, the man’s lids drooped,
his face going slack, bright eyes fading to bloodshot and yellow. He turned
away and wandered off, disappearing around the corner while mumbling something
to no one in particular about the failure of the gold standard.
    And Jack was alone again. He looked
up and down the street, feeling out of place, breakfast settling unpleasantly
in his stomach. He secretly wished there was someone he could look to, someone
he could trade quizzical glances with as they both wondered about the secret
insanity living and dying in back alleys all across America. Then they might
dismiss the observation altogether with the suggestion of coffee at a little
café down the street. But he was alone, this section of town completely
deserted, silent but for the distant caw of a lonesome crow.
    Jack looked back at the empty kiosk,
feeling as though he had sneaked onto the back lot of a sound stage and was
prowling an empty movie set, the props set up but the extras yet to emerge from
the studio cafeteria, the stars still hiding inside their trailers, waiting for
their cue.
    Jack let another awkward, silent
moment go by then decided that perhaps the scene had already been shot; that he
was not too early, but too late. He looked quickly at his watch: 10:53 a.m.
Then he peered down