Dark Sky (The Misadventures of Max Bowman Book 1) Read Free Page A

Good Times families and the like. I was one of the few people paying most of the freight on the place, which didn’t bother me, it was still a good deal for this neck of the woods. I lived on the 13 th floor, where else?  At least the building still had the balls to call it the 13 th floor, not like the other high-rises where they went right from the 12 th to the 14 th . They’d rather look like they flunked arithmetic than deny ancient superstitions, which was typical in a country that tried to ignore climate change while the seas rose, the forests burned and the reservoirs dried up.
    Immediately next door to me lived neighbor Larry, around sixty-five years old, grey hair, grungy cap and stubble. I didn’t know what was wrong with Larry and I didn’t want to find out. He was barely able to walk due to oozing sores on his leg, but he managed to double his speed when he finally got a cane to work with. Because Leg Sore Larry wasn’t all that mobile, he stayed at home covering every inch of the walls of his shitty little apartment with pictures ripped from whatever magazines they still actually churned out of a printing press. His ongoing sideways Sistine Chapel rip-and-tape mural extended to his front entrance, where he was in his Scarlett Period, Scarlett as in Scarlett Johansson, whose magnificent everything was the centerpiece of every photo on the door facing our common hallway. It added just the right touch of continental charm associated with every smelly college dorm hallway.
    Lest you think I’m a cruel man who doesn’t care about the disabled, you’re entitled. From my side, Leg Sore Larry tried too hard to befriend me when I moved in and then turned surly when I didn’t greet him with open arms. After that, he started stealing my New York Times on a regular basis. I suppose we had a lot in common - like me, his marriage was long over and his kids didn’t talk to him. The difference was I didn’t mind being alone and he did. But something about him made me think his problems began long before his legs started leaking.    
    On the other side of my door was Nancy with the Breathing Apparatus Face. That was my version of the Frank Sinatra classic love song, Nancy with the Laughing Face . True, my rewrite had a few too many syllables in the title, but my sick mind made them fit to the tune. Nancy was one of those confined to a wheelchair who also had, as my song title suggested, some sort of breathing tube attached to some sort of contraption in the back of the wheelchair that was required to be on twenty-four-seven. She wasn’t a sight most people would enjoy, but I liked her. In contrast to Leg Sore Larry, Nancy always had a big smile and a nice greeting for you. She was clearly not going to have a lot of enjoyment during what was left of her life, but she was going to make the most of it anyway. I might have married Nancy if sex wasn’t out of the question. Maybe I was just captivated by the knowledge that she was physically incapable of stealing my Times .
    I unlocked the door and went inside my two bedroom apartment.  I didn’t really need that second bedroom anymore, it was where my daughters slept when they used to visit. Used to. I threw out the rest of their stuff last year.
    “You’re back already? What the fuck? You barely had enough time to ride the train and back.”
    Jules didn’t wait to be in the same room with me before she started in. She would always begin abusing me as soon as I opened the door. She kept at it as I walked down the flight of stairs inside the front door that led down to the actual apartment. Despite what Mr. Barry Filer thought of me, I did have a semblance of a bedside manner. Jules’, on the other hand, was removed at birth. Against my better judgment, I had given her a key three months ago. Now she thought she lived here.
    “It was a short meeting,” I told her.
    “What, you just blew each other and left?”
    That made me laugh until I actually pictured what