Flamethrower Read Free Page B

home,” Ruby said. “I’ll wait up.”
    “That would be nice,” Ed said softly.
    Ruby flipped her phone shut. She half expected Ed to call back and ask her what was wrong. He didn’t.
    Ruby walked toward the signpost she’d chained her bike to. She preferred riding a bicycle through dense murderous traffic to taking the subway. She did have a car, but driving—which she’d just learned to do—terrified her. So she rode her bike. She sometimes felt like some sort of freak for riding a bicycle everywhere, but bike riding wasn’t just the province of stoned messengers and people who worked in amusement park museums. In fact, thousands of New Yorkers did everything from ride all over the city in massive groups to race eight-thousand-dollar carbon-fiber bikes at the crack of dawn in Central Park. Though Ruby got her share of insults and angry drivers trying to kill her for sport, the bike was better than mass transit.
    Ruby put two fingers in her pocket and found another Fireball. She popped it into her mouth then slowly pedaled east.

3.    HELP
    I t was close to rush hour, the noise was dizzying, and the air hung thick over the buzzing traffic. A cab tried to kill Ruby, and she hated New York. Everyone who loved New York hated New York and fantasized about moving to Vermont. Some actually did move to Vermont. They pretended to be happy there, but Ruby knew they were secretly cold and bored. So she stayed in New York.
    Ruby crossed through Queens to where it nudged up against the ass-end of Brooklyn. Planes flew low, homing in on nearby JFK Airport. Here and there, a seagull cut a path through the polluted sky.
    On Linden Boulevard, Ruby rode up onto the sidewalk for a few blocks until she reached the side street that led down into the tiny neighborhood known as The Hole.
    There had been a lot of rain lately, and most of it had gathered here, in this five-acre dent of land situated a few hundred yards from a long series of housing projects and highways. It was, as far as Ruby could tell, the strangest neighborhood in New York City. To one side was Howard Beach, a white working-class area jutted up against the periphery of unruly East New York. Squat in the middle of it all was a small area known as Lindenwood, where blue-collar home owners sharedland with horses kept in ramshackle barns. The barns weren’t entirely legal, but real estate there wasn’t exactly valuable, so no one had done anything about it.
    As Ruby got off to walk her bike through a patch of mud, she saw the woman she’d come to think of as Pee Lady, squatting between two parked cars. She was a fiftyish, reasonably well-dressed woman who, for whatever reason, chose to urinate in public places. This was the fourth time in a month that Ruby had seen her. As far as Ruby knew, Pee Lady had no business at The Hole. Ruby had never seen her near a horse or talking to anyone who kept a horse there, and she didn’t seem to be friends with any of the home owners. No. The woman had wandered over from who-knows-where to pee there, between cars.
    As Ruby walked by, Pee Lady looked up. Her pale eyes locked on Ruby’s but nothing showed on her face. Ruby tried to think of something to say. Nothing came to mind.
    The stable where Ruby’s horse lived was a squat wooden building surrounded by a ten-foot-tall chain-link fence. Some days, Coleman, the stable owner, left his two pit bulls, Honey and Pokey, to guard the place. The dogs weren’t there now though. Coleman had probably taken them for a romp along Jamaica Bay, or to the posh doggie bakery in nearby Queens where the pits salivated over treats and stared down the designer dogs owned by the wealthy matrons who made up the bulk of the bakery’s patronage.
    Ruby unlocked the gate, wheeled her bike in, and leaned it against the fence. She walked into the small dark barn. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she involuntarily picturedJody’s husband’s leg in the Carnegie Hall tote. She could still see the