Read Online Violets & Violence by Morgan Parker - Free Book Online Page A

“Wow.”
    Lindsey smiled at last, agreeing with a nod of her own. “That’s poetic.” She turned back toward the table.
    I got you now, Lindsey. I know you. I see you.
    You’re mine.
    Calm. Deep breath.
    “I looked up her personal information on Quotient’s computers,” I went on, my words spilling out a little too eagerly. “Found out where she lived, off-campus, a couple blocks from Columbia.” I paused. Stay calm or you’ll lose her. Calm. “I walked past her apartment four or five times over that first weekend, just hoping for a chance to cross her path.”
    Lindsey stopped moving, her back to me. She stood close enough to the table that she could place the empty Dasani bottle down and free her hands so they could get clammy as she pieced together what I had just said.
    “Then what?” she prompted, her voice quiet but it echoed off the walls and reached me just fine.
    “Then I saw her.”
    “That first weekend?”
    “Sunday, yes. I was walking up Manhattan Avenue, looked down another street – I think it was one-fourteenth – and I saw her from behind.” I chuckled at the memory, the days when she wore those skirts that would have any man shifting on his feet and thinking about his favorite sport. Or if she were standing close enough, that you could feel her sexual energy or smell her citrus shampoo, or what it must feel like to pass a kidney stone. A big one. “I didn’t want to scare her, it was the wrong side of the park, but I hurried to catch up to her anyway.” Silence.
    “Did you?” Her voice came out as a quiet gasp.
    “Damn right I did. I waited for her to reach that pond in Morningside Park and then I started jogging. Jogged right past her—”
    “And then you looked back, stopped, and chatted her up,” Lindsey finished for me. I didn’t have to see her face to know it had turned white.
    Still smirking, I reveled in the silence. I enjoyed it.
    I own you now, Lindsey.
    When she started moving again—still with her back to me—I noticed a trembling in her hands. She closed the lunch box she had brought, and then I opened up again. “How long ago did you graduate from that fancy Business School, Lindsey?”
    She didn’t answer.
    I stayed quiet.
    Now you know. And I know. It’s our secret.
    When she left – not waiting for Rinker to return, which seemed to have been the protocol these past four days – I lifted my head and studied, memorized everything around me.
    Everything.
    Every little detail.
    Life and death.

7

     
    I hit the doorbell to Violet’s house on Lynden Park Court and waited. She had texted me earlier in the day, during her rehearsal for a new illusion (she never called them tricks, said hookers performed “tricks” and magicians performed “illusions”) and then invited me over to her place for dinner after work.
    She didn’t have a performance tonight, always took Monday off, and said she wanted to spend time at home instead of out on the city. I figured she was being mindful of the reality of my budgetary constraints – while I earned a decent salary, I didn’t earn nearly as much as she did.
    I waited and listened. Hearing no movement on the other side of the door, I hit the doorbell again; either she hadn’t heard it the first time, or she would think I was incredibly impatient.
    At last, the door swung open and Violet appeared, flashing a big smile. She was wearing jeans and a shirt that hung loosely over her ass, something straight out of the eighties. And her hair, always different each time, had been pulled back into a ponytail, her eyes free of the kind of heavy makeup I remembered from the night at my place almost a week ago now, the night we had shared late Chinese food. This, I imagined, was the real Violet, the one that ate Ben & Jerry’s and watched movies in her pajamas.
    Almost immediately, I spotted that faded freckle high on her nose, the one I had yet to kiss, because I still hadn’t made love to her, and my mouth watered.
    “You