Matala Read Free Page A

people—a large-headed girl from Modesto, a German woman named Helena, and some guy from Boston I’d never seen before—all told me that Justine was waiting for me in the women’s dorm. They all said it seriously, too, so I knew what to expect. I still wonder, when I remember it, at the fact that those strangers, those wanderers, some of whom had been there only a few days, did her bidding like that, treated her as if she mattered, as if she ran the place and they meant something to her. Even the people who worked there treated her that way. La Madre, they called her. Mother Justine.
    I found her sitting on a bed, alone in the long room of bunks, and sensed that she had even arranged that. Before she looked up at me, I guessed the situation from the way her knees bounced, as if she were running somehow while still sitting. And when I saw her eyes, I was certain. Then I noticed the opened pill bottle on the blanket beside her and said, “How’d you manage this?”
    â€œNice to see you, too, love,” she said in her smoothest, most beguiling Kentish, as she called it—a Canterbury upbringing polished by years in West London and America. Which is where I’d met her two years before as I sulked in a bar on my twentieth birthday. Later, when we’d been together for a while, I started asking her to take me to see where she was from, but she always refused, as if there was something there she didn’t want me to see. Eventually I quit asking.
    â€œHow’d you get it?” I said.
    â€œI bought it,” she said, “with the last of what we had.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI thought you’d enjoy it. I got something for us both. How was your day?”
    â€œI thought we weren’t going to. I thought we said we had to take a break.”
    â€œWell, we’re at the end of it, aren’t we? Our little adventure.”
    â€œAre we?”
    â€œIt seems we’re in the process of the old crash and burn, doesn’t it, Will? Rust never sleeps and all that. So I say let’s burn out with it. Let’s just play it out and sod all.”
    â€œAnd then what?”
    â€œI have no idea, my sweet.”
    â€œGimme some.”
    â€œSuch a greedy monkey,” she said, but she tossed the bottle farther down the mattress so that some of the pills spilled out. I picked out two and swallowed them dry.
    â€œDoes this mean we’re leaving?”
    â€œOn what would we leave? You going to walk home?”
    I sat, mulling on it, until she said, “Oh, stop the worrying. I’ll get us out of it. I always have, haven’t I?”
    It was true.
    â€œHungry?” she said and began to reach into the canvas bag at her feet.
    â€œI got dinner,” I said. “A good one.”
    I told her briefly about the happy accident that led to my getting fed and thought she might at least be glad of it, that she didn’t have to worry about my eating for a day or two. I thought she’d see the humor in how it was all the girl’s doing, she who stopped and spoke to me, and how I didn’t have to do anything but play along, turning things a little this way and that, how she even said she’d come out here later tonight, and who knew, maybe she would, but what the hell, it was all kind of funny. So I thought it might bring out a smile at least.
    Justine said, “Well, aren’t you the selfish bastard? You really believe she’s coming here?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œOf course you do. You knew all along she wasn’t coming out to a flipping youth hostel. Not after she sobers up. So you had your little fun, got your nosh-up, and old Justine can just piss off.”
    â€œWhat’d you want me to do? Bring a doggie bag?” I could have, I realized then. Ordered something else and brought it along.
    Justine said, “Did you even try to get anything off her? Of course not. Because that would’ve helped