Edge of End Read Free Page A

help to get back to my hometown. Do you
have a telephone here?”
    “ Telephone?” she sniffed
smugly. “What the hell do you need it for? Who are you going to
make a call to?”
    She caught me by surprise. She had a
point. I had no numbers in my mind to call.
    “ Can you tell me where the
police station is?” I replied instantly. “I need help,
really!”
    “ There aren’t any police
stations here,” she replied. “I’m not the right person to help you,
young man. If you need anything to drink, spit it out, or get the
fuck out of my café.”
    What
the … What a rude woman! I narrowed my eyes
at her complete loss for words. For a split second I even thought
of punching her right in the face. I wanted to teach her a good
lesson, to never talk to customers in the way she had just spoken
to me. I clenched my fists angrily.
    “ Why don’t you go back to
your house?” she said, tearing her eyes off me as she turned
around.
    “ House?” I replied,
slightly taken aback. She took a step and paused. “I told you I’m
lost here. I’ve got no home, where the fuck am I supposed to
go?”
    She remained staunchly in front of me,
and I wondered what I’d said that made her freeze.
    The man at the bar lowered his glass
to the counter slowly as if he were considering my
words.
    “ Haven’t you been into any
house in this town, young man?” the man spoke for the first time
since I’d been in the bar. He spoke with his back to me.
    “ No,” I
replied.
    Although I could only see the right
side of his face, I noted a smile resting on his lips.
    “ Pour him my favorite
drink,” he ordered the woman in a hoarse voice.
    Then he finally turned his face to me.
I stared at him wonderingly, and then my wonder turned to
awkwardness. The left side of his face was wrapped with a black rag
covering his eye and cheek. His gray hair escaped from under the
rag and fell across his forehead. With his one eye, he looked at me
sharply until the woman reached behind the bar.
    “ What is your name?” he
asked me and then shook his head. “Do you have one?”
    “ My name is…” I stumbled
anxiously. I had surely had a name once, one which I couldn’t now
remember. But I should be called something, shouldn’t I?
    “ Jonathan,” I replied with
great uncertainty. It was the first name that popped into my mind,
also the name that the mysterious woman from the first house had
called me.
    “ Okay. Let it be
Jonathan,” the man said standing up. Holding his glass he moved
towards me. “May I?” he pointed at the chair in front of
me.
    I nodded. The woman took a bottle from
the shelf and poured a colorless drink into a glass.
    “ Tell me Jonathan, what do
you think? Who are you?” he asked as he sat down.
    I stared him in his single light brown
eye. I lingered, not because of his question, but because I was
wondering what had happened to his other eye and to the other half
of his wrinkled face.
    “ It makes no difference,”
I answered gruffly after a little while. “I need to get out of
here. What is this city? Where am I?”
    “ It makes no difference,”
Malcolm (that’s what the woman had called him) parroted.
    “ Okay, I get it,” I
grinned slyly. He was treating me like I had treated him. “Why are
you so interested? Maybe I’m a tourist or a
businessman.”
    “ You look like neither of
them,” Malcolm cut me off.
    “ Maybe I’m a killer,” I
shrugged.
    “ You might be,” he said,
taking a sip.
    I eyed his drink, and my mouth hung
half-open. Malcolm was drinking a dark yellow murky looking liquid
which appeared to be boiling in the glass, but no steam escaped it.
“Good drink, you should try one,” he said, noticing my shocked
stare.
    I shook my head involuntarily. Malcolm
laughed a silent laugh. “It does look nasty, but it tastes good.”
He shot a look back at the butch woman demanding my drink with his
harsh stare. Then he turned back towards me. “I know,” he resumed.
“You don’t remember who you