Loss Read Free Page B

three-bedroom apartment. It was probably my duty to call the landlord and squeal on them. No pets were allowed, much less restricted exotic animals, but I liked the action they brought with them, the energy. Let somebody else rat them out.
    We carried everything up the stairs rather than futzing with the tight elevator. It took less than two hours for Ferdi and me to get everything inside and set up.
    Ferdi handed me twenty dollars as a tip, but the monkey danced so desperately and kept jabbing his cup at me with such ferocity that I finally gave him the crumpled bill. Ferdi had a real racket going, and I wondered if I could talk him into being my new agent. I could just see him giving hell to my editors, the monkey using his little pen to scribble out clauses on bad contracts. Ferdi asked me to stay and share a bottle of wine with him, but I had a story I wanted to finish.
    When I got back to my place I sat at my desk staring at the screen at some half-composed paragraphs that made virtually no sense to me. Being with Gabriella had inspired me, but now the words ran together into phrases that held no real resolve. I didn’t know my own themes anymore.
    I sat back and stared up at the shafts of light stabbing down across my study, feeling the weight of the entire building above me–all the living and the dead, the bricks and mortar of history growing heavier every year. A hundred and forty years worth of heritage and legacy, chronicles and sagas. Soon they might crush me out of existence. Maybe I was even in the mood for it.
    I had a stack of unopened mail on my bed. I tore into an envelope containing a royalty check for $21.34. I started to crumple it in my fist, but I needed the money. I decided that no matter how Mojo might push me, I wasn’t going to give it to him. I picked up an unfinished chapter of my latest novel and the words offended me. I tossed the pages across the room and watched them dive-bomb against the far wall. There wasn’t even enough air in here for them to float on a draft. I wondered if Corben was still up there howling. I wondered if Gabriella had returned to him yet or if she was out in the city enjoying herself, taking in enough of the living world for both of them. For all three of us. The claustrophobia started to get to me and I decided to go walk the building.
    I hadn’t gotten twenty paces from my apartment door when I spotted a man laid out on the tiled floor of the lobby–a shallow red halo inching outward–with an ice pick in his forehead that vibrated with every breath he took.
    I’d never seen him in the light of day, but I thought it was the guy who’d invented aluminum foil. I couldn’t believe he was still alive. Blood and clear fluids lapped from his ears. A wave of vertigo rippled through me and I bit down on my tongue and it passed. I bent to him and had no idea what to do. He was finished, he had to be finished because there was three inches of metal burrowed into his brain, but he was wide-eyed and still staring at me with great interest. He licked his lips and tried to move his hands.
    “Jesus Holy Christ...” I whispered. I didn’t have a cell phone. I started to turn and run for my apartment when he called my name.
    “Will.”
    It was astonishing he could actually see. Death was already clouding his eyes and gusting through his chest. His voice had been thickened by it. It was a sound I’d heard several times before. He sounded exactly like my father when the old man had about three minutes left to go. There was no point in leaving him now. I kneeled at his side. “I’m here.”
    “I lied,” he said.
    “About what?”
    “I didn’t invent aluminum foil. Aluminum foil was first introduced into the industry as an insulating material. It later found diverse applications in a variety of fields.”
    “What?”
    “It can be used instead of lead and tinfoil in other specified applications. The aluminum foil thickness ranges from 0.0043 millimeters to 0.127